After her stepson, John, died from tuberculosis at the family’s Penacres home in Texas, Annie Fellows Johnston returned to Pewee Valley, where the “Little Colonel” stories began. In 1911, she purchased The Beeches from long-time friend and confidante, Mrs. Lawton, and lived there with her last remaining stepchild, Mary Gardener Johnston, for the rest of her life. Their move to The Beeches was noted in the April 9, 1911 edition of “The Galveston Daily News” State Society column under items from Boerne (the "little town of Bauer in Mary Ware in Texas):

Mrs. Annie Fellows Johnston and her daughter left for their new home in Pewee Valley, Kentucky, Friday (April 7, 1911)

The author’s reason for purchasing the spacious home, said her daughter in a 1963 interview, was the garden, which also frequently attracted the eye – and camera -- of the two women’s mutual friend, photographer Kate Matthews.

According to Katie Smith’s 1974 “The Land of the Little Colonel,” after returning to Pewee Valley, “...Mrs. Johnson continued to write, usually from 9am until noon. After lunch and a rest, Mrs. Johnston and Miss Mary would often take walks along our shaded avenues...” Miss Mary would keep quiet in the mornings, while her stepmother worked in her upstairs study, located on the backside of the house overlooking the garden. A description of her study is included in a July 19, 1963 “Courier-Journal” story called “Reminiscences of ‘Little Colonel’” written by Susan Clarke:

… Miss Mary showed the way to the study and pointed out the typewriter Annie Fellows Johnston used. A tall clerk’s desk, painted white, stood next to the window. When her mother tired of sitting, she would transfer her papers and continue to work there, standing up.

Above the desk hangs a large prism. “Mother used to like to look at things through it,” Miss Mary said. It was given to the author after her book, “Georgina of the Rainbows” was published.

Another gallery of photographs lined a wall of the study. Miss Mary pointed out some of the early members of the Louisville Writer’s Club. Annie Fellows was one of the first….

Evansville, Indiana reporter Jeannette Covert Nolan supplied additional details about the room where Annie practiced her craft in a c.1940s article called “Return from Kentucky.” It was, she wrote:

 “…an airy room with white woodwork and furnishings, frilled white curtains at the windows and Chinese matting on the floor. The door still bears the metal placard lettered ‘Headquarters’ which Mrs. Johnston hung there and the decorative knocker hung there by the Little Colonel. Mrs. Johnston liked crystals and you will see several on her desk and suspended above it. Beside one window is the sturdy ‘standing desk’ which she designed – because, as Miss Mary says, “she got so weary of sitting down to her writing.”

The walls are lined with framed photographs. I noticed among them, prominently displayed, pictures of two Hoosiers who were Mrs. Johnston’s contemporaries, James Whitcomb Riley and Cale Young Rice. There is also a group of photographs of members of the “Author’s Club” which Mrs. Johnston founded and which was to develop such talents as that of Alice Hegan Rice, George Madden Martin, Frances MacCauley and Eleanor Mercein Kelly. Scattered liberally in this room and over the whole house are photographs of the Little Colonel, her friends and companions.

The Beech’s second-floor study where Annie Fellows Johnston did her writing
Photo from “Land of the Little Colonel,” published by Katie Smith in 1974

From the Courier-Journal Magazine, June 22, 1952

That Mary kept her stepmother’s effects intact later proved to be a blessing to Berea College, which secured the original manuscript of her unfinished novel, “A Mountain Mailbag,” twenty-three years after the author’s death. Left in a briefcase since Annie Fellows Johnston set it aside when she first became ill with the cancer that later claimed her life, “A Mountain Mailbag” told the story of the struggles of young mountain people who wanted an education.  The mountain schools of Kentucky had long been a cause dear to her heart and she first wrote about them in “The Little Colonel at Boarding School,” published in 1904. A July 25, 1954 Courier-Journal Magazine article by Adele Brandeis recounts the tale of how the manuscript eventually found its way to Berea College:

This year Dr. Elizabeth Peck of the history department, who has been at Berea “man and boy” since 1912, was made college historian. She immediately took over (the papers of Dr. William J. Hutchins, who was president of the college in 1920).

To her great excitement, being a “Little Colonel” fan, she found two letters from Annie Fellows Johnston, dated 1919 and 1920, in which the author wrote:

“I am very busy with a work which I hope will be of profit to Berea, indirectly. It is a book about the mountain people themselves, putting their various problems in a story which I hope will have as wide an influence as my other books seem to have exerted. It is to be called “A Mountain Mailbag”…D. Appleton and Company, who will publish the book, are quite enthusiastic.”

“How strange,” thought Dr. Peck, “that I have never read that book.” There was no copy in the college library. And when she wrote the Louisville Free Public Library staff, they reported that not only was the book not in the library, but they could find no record of its publication. Dr. Peck was non-plussed – but not for long.

She knew Mrs. Johnston had lived with her daughter, Miss Mary Johnston at Pewee Valley, so she wrote to ask her: “Where is that book?”

The letter, when it arrived at Miss Johnston’s home, “The Beeches,” created great interest. For Mrs. Johnston had had the original manuscript ever since the beginning of the author’s long illness in 1920. It had rested there in Pewee Valley all this time in its original briefcase.

Miss Johnston immediately sent the first two chapters to Dr. Peck and asked her to go over them, explaining that the briefcase contained parts of 16 chapters and a heading for a 17^th –_ some quite complete, some fragmentary, some only in summary. They were in typescript with notes in Annie Fellows Johnston’s handwriting.

Berea wrote back that they wished they might own the manuscript, but could not afford to buy it, and did not know whether in its incomplete state anyone would publish it. But they asked if they might have it on loan for display…

Miss Mary Johnston said she would be delighted to give the manuscript to Berea. She has been wondering for years what she ought to do with it to make it accessible for she that interest in Mrs. Johnston’s work had never waned….

 

 

A “Call of the Pewee” article from a special bicentennial issue provides information about renovations made to the home’s interior after Mary Johnston’s death in 1966.

 
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Recent Photo of the Beeches

Thanks to Sue Berry and Alex Luken for sending us newspaper clippings from the Louisville Free Public Library’s York Street branch and the Kentucky Historical Society’s library in Frankfort, Ky. that are quoted on this page. Also special thanks to Suzanne Schimpeler for sharing her sketch of Mary Johnston’s studio and to Margie Fletcher Thompson for the color photo of The Beeches from 1952

 

Go to The Beeches: The Lawton Years