History & Nostalgia
Home Page Photo: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at her typewriter, courtesy of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society, and the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Collection, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. Above: Postage Stamp copyright US Postal Service; The center portion of the structure is the original cottage.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Sojourn in Banner Elk
By Carol Lowe Timblin
When Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings visited Banner Elk in the fall of 1936, she had already achieved national acclaim as a writer of short stories and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for her 1933 novel South Moon Under. Despite everything that was going well for Rawlings, she was experiencing writer’s block. Though she had recovered from a bad fall from a horse at her Cross Creek farm in rural Florida, she was still suffering from a bout with malaria.
Renting a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina presented a rare opportunity for her to recuperate and focus on writing. As the keynote speaker at a School of English at Blowing Rock in July (also attended by Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind), she had learned about some rental cabins offered by Lees-McRae College in nearby Banner Elk.
The cottage where Rawlings stayed featured a living room with wormy chestnut paneling and a stone fireplace, a small kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. In a letter to her Aunt Ida, she describes it as “a small new modern cabin, immaculate, handmade furniture, fireplace, electric light, electric stove, and water heater, gorgeous mountain view, town is a quarter mile away, another cabin within calling distance—all for $15 a month.”
Rawlings arrived at the cottage on September 18 and left around November 7, according to “Letters Written from Banner Elk” by Lisa Kerr Dunn (The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature, 2019). The timing of her visit allowed her to experience the splendor of autumn and the seasonal cold weather. Rawlings planned to work on a short story and a novel about a young boy—ideas she was developing and had already discussed at length with Maxwell Perkins, her editor at Scribner’s.
The “Orphan” Boy
Soon after she arrived in Banner Elk, Rawlings contacted Grandfather Orphanage (later named Grandfather Home for Children) about hiring a boy to do chores. Dale Wills, a 12-year-old who had lived at the orphans’ home near the cottage for several years, was chosen for the job.
During her stay at the cottage, Rawlings and Dale forged a strong friendship during visits, which often extended into the evening hours. He chopped wood (swinging the axe like a man), played with the dog, and performed other tasks. She talked about life in rural Florida, and he told stories about Edgar Tufts, the college president, who kept a hunting preserve at the orphanage for visitors and paid the orphan boys for killing snakes. Rawlings was especially interested in studying the habits of the deer in the pens, which she would later use in her new novel. Dale also explained why his mother had placed her four children in the orphanage after his father had abandoned them. Rawlings wanted to adopt Dale, but learned his mother lived in Bristol, TN, and visited him occasionally. Besides, the orphanage frowned on the idea of adoption at that time.
Though her dream of adopting Dale did not come true, Rawlings featured him in a two-page story called “A Mother in Mannville,” published in the Saturday Evening Post at year’s end. According to Banner Elk author Mary Dudley Gilmer, who wrote Marjorie Rawlings in the Mountains: The Story Behind “A Mother in Mannville,” the story was published as fiction, but almost everything in the story was factual and centered around Dale, the orphan called “Jerry” in the story. She also patterned “Jody,” the main character in The Yearling, after Dale and a neighbor boy at Cross Creek. Published in 1938, The Yearling won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year and became a hit movie starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman in 1946. Today the classic is known around the world.
Life at the Cottage
During her time in Banner Elk, Rawlings wrote letters to relatives and friends and maintained a healthy correspondence with her editor. She also took long walks toward Hanging Rock and to the top of Blood Camp Ridge. The locals she met became inspirations for some characters in her stories. She also walked from the cottage over the Hemlock Trail to the Banner Elk Hotel, where she enjoyed a well-balanced, homecooked lunch every day. (The mile-long trail runs from the college’s South Campus to the Mill Pond today.)
Work kept Rawlings quite busy in Banner Elk, but she took time to travel to Chapel Hill and Asheville. At the request of Perkins, Rawlings visited noted author F. Scott Fitzgerald at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville. According to writer Michael Joslin (“Escape to Banner Elk,” Our State Magazine, September 2008), she found Fitzgerald “overwhelmingly attractive.” He autographed a lunch menu and placed it in a copy of The Great Gatsby, his gift to her. She read the book for the second time and wrote to Fitzgerald expressing an interest in continuing their friendship. He did not reply.
Reunion with Dale Wills
After Rawlings returned to Florida, she and Dale exchanged letters a few times but lost touch during World War II. In 1946, Rawlings rented a house in Blowing Rock so she could revise “A Mother in Mannville.” She and her husband, Norton Baskin, drove to Banner Elk to see the place that had inspired her story. Gilmer states in her book that Rawlings found the cottage “abandoned and overgrown,” and the bridge over the river at Hemlock Trail washed out by the 1940 flood. She did not inquire at the children’s home about Dale because “no news could be bad news.”
Her revised story was published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1947 and was adapted to the film, The Sun Comes Up, in 1949. The magazine also included an interview with Rawlings in which she mentioned Dale Wills. He saw the story and got in touch with her. After their reunion, they continued to see each other several times a year at her Cross Creek farm until her death at age 57 in 1953. After completing high school, he joined the U.S. Navy and served on the USS Idaho during the war. He married and had children. Rawlings was elated when the Willses named their daughter “Marjorie Dale.”
Cottage Became a Family Home
Eventually, the cottage served as the home of Harrison and Edna Baldwin for half a century. Harrison, who worked at Lees-McRae College, built additions on each end of the structure to accommodate their family of six children. After his death in 2002, Edna, a staff member of Grandfather Orphanage for many years, lived in the cottage until she passed away in 2022.
Members of The Marjorie Rawlings Society visited the cottage in the spring of 2002 during their conference in Asheville, where Gilmer gave a speech about Rawlings’ stay at the cottage. The society also erected a granite monument near the Hemlock Trail entrance, which reads: “Rawlings wrote the first draft of her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Yearling, at this location. Her famous short story, “A Mother in Mannville,” featured Dale Wills, a boy at Grandfather Home. Both stories are popular MGM movies.”
Hurricane Helene damaged the marker and the trail in 2024, but both have been repaired. The cottage withstood the storm but remains vacant today. Members of Preserve Mecklenburg, Inc. visited the site in 2025, with the recommendation that Lees-McRae College repurpose it as a retreat for seminars and special events in the future.
What was the significance of Rawlings’ sojourn in Banner Elk?
Writer Michael Joslin summed it up in his article in the August 23-24, 2006, edition of The Avery Journal-Times: “The house, the trail, and the stone monument remain to mark Rawlings’ sojourn in Banner Elk, as do Lees-McRae College, Grandfather Home, and the most endearing reminder, her writing. Her Hemlock Hill escape proved invaluable to her creative career, as well as unusually rich for her personal life.”