The M. K. Rawlings Trail: The Early Years Traditional Cache

This has always been a special place for Jules and me.  During our dating years we canoed and picniced along the canal, and were eventually engaged at The (Old) Yearling Restaurant.  Over the years, the State of Florida has increasingly reconginzed the significance of Mrs. Rawlings work, and made efforts to maintain her "footprint" on the literary, and historic, community.  This "trail" will lead you from her "country" home to her grave.

Margorie Kinnan Rawlings's Life

Biography

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was born on 8 August 1896 in Washington, DC. Her father was principal examiner in the U.S. Patent Office, but according to Rawlings, "he lived the true life of his mind and heart on his Maryland farm" ("Marjorie Rawlings" 343). Rawlings claimed that she "learned her love of nature" from her father. Her mother's family was from southern Michigan, and she spent her summers on their farm. Living close to the land as she was growing up "planted deep in [her] a love of the soil, the crops, the seasons and a sense of kinship with men and women everywhere who live close to the soil" (343).

Rawlings began writing at an early age and started publishing letters and award-winning short stories in the Washington Post when she was fourteen years old. Her father died in 1913, and the family moved to Wisconsin, where Rawlings attended the University of Wisconsin. She thrived in college and pursued drama and writing, often publishing her works in the Wisconsin Literary Magazine. She starred in a play titled Lima Beans during her junior year. She met and fell in love with Charles Rawlings, and they became engaged during her senior year.

After Rawlings graduated from Wisconsin with honors, she headed to New York City to work for the YWCA. She spent her time writing and trying to get published. When she married Charles Rawlings in 1919, the couple moved briefly to his hometown of Rochester, New York. When they could not find work they enjoyed there, they moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where Rawlings found a job as a feature writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal. She wrote a column titled "Live Women in Louisville." By 1921 the Rawlingses had moved back to Rochester, and Marjorie Rawlings began writing for the Rochester Evening Journal. During this time, she composed poetry in a series called "Songs of a Housewife" and a novel, Blood of My Blood, which was published posthumously in 2002.

Although they were gainfully employed as writers, in 1928 Charles and Marjorie Rawlings felt restless and decided to alter dramatically their lives by buying a seventy-two-acre farm in frontier Florida.

(Excerpt from the Margorie Kinnan Rawlings Society)