History

 In 1930, William Faulkner purchased what was then known as “The Bailey Place”, a primitive Greek Revival house sitting on 4 acres of landscaped grounds with 29 acres of surrounding woods known as Bailey Woods. The house was originally built in 1844 for Robert B. Sheegog, an Irish immigrant who arrived in America before 1830 and came to Lafayette County, Mississippi from Hickman County, Tennessee. As a cotton planter and enslaver, Sheegog maintained his nearest plantation in Panola County, Mississippi, while this house, then known as “The Sheegog Place” or “Home Place,” served as an urban residence for him and his family until 1872.

In 1872, the Bailey family purchased the home and lived here until 1923. The house and property then sat abandoned for seven years before William Faulkner purchased it from Sallie Bailey Bryant in 1930. A year later, Faulkner renamed the house “Rowan Oak,” drawing inspiration from two trees: the rowan tree of Scotland, a symbol of peace and security, and the American live oak, a symbol of strength and solitude.

Soon thereafter, William Faulkner optioned the surrounding acreage (Bailey Woods) and settled in with his wife, Estelle, and her two children from a previous marriage, Malcom and Victoria. Within a few years, their own daughter, Jill, was born. Rowan Oak was the family home of the Faulkners until 1962, the year of William Faulkner’s death. In 1972, Jill Faulkner Summers sold the house to The University of Mississippi to secure it as a place for people worldwide to learn about her father and his work. 

Rowan Oak was William Faulkner’s private world, in reality and imagination, and he was fascinated with its history. His writings were inspired by local stories of Native Americans, runaway slaves, old colonels, and spinsters who gave china-painting lessons and are interwoven into his own memories of coming of age in a South torn between traditional ways and modern development. Faulkner’s years spent at Rowan Oak were productive as he set stories and novels to paper, ultimately winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, and the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1954 for A Fable. William Faulkner remains one of the most celebrated and studied authors in the world, with conferences, societies and journals dedicated to his life and work.