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Edgewood Manor
The Craig Years, the Little Colonel Years and Beyond
(1864-Present)
(Sunnyside-Edgewood from “Historic Pewee Valley”)
go to Edgewood, The Walter
N. Haldeman Years (1854-64) >
This Kate Matthews photo shows Edgewood
as it looked during the “Little Colonel” era, when the house faced
Central Avenue and was owned by the Craig family. In 1988, it was
moved 160 feet to its present location in the Edgewood Manor
subdivision. The front entrance is now parallel to Central.
Annie Fellows Johnston first acquaints her young readers with Edgewood in
“Two Little Knights of Kentucky
(Who Were the Little Colonel’s Neighbors)” published in 1899. Both the
house and the characters introduced in that book – Grandmother McIntyre;
Aunt Allison; Aunt Elise and Uncle Sidney; the “Two Little Knights,” Keith
and Malcolm McIntyre; and Captain and Mrs. Dudley as well as their daughter
“Ginger” – were destined to become mainstays of the “Little Colonel”
series.
In real life, Edgewood was the home of the Craig family from about 1864
to 1933, when the last family member living in the house died. For fifty of
those years, Annie Craig was Edgewood’s owner, until her death at age 85 in
1914. She and her husband, Louisville hat and fur merchant Alexander Craig,
purchased the house at auction during the Civil War after it was
confiscated
from its second owner, newspaper publisher Walter Haldeman.
Just four years later, Alexander died, leaving Annie to raise their seven
children – four daughters and three sons -- alone.
It was Annie Craig who served as the model for “Mrs.
McIntyre” in the “Little Colonel” series. Daughter, Fanny, was the model
for Aunt Allison; daughter Louise and son-in-law
Samuel Culbertson were the models for Aunt Elise
and Uncle Sidney; grandchildren Craig and William Culbertson were the
real-life counterparts of “Two Little Knights”
Keith and Malcolm McIntyre; and daughter Mary/Mamie and her husband
Captain Lawton were the Dudleys. In later books, as
Annie Fellows Johnston’s friendship with Mamie Lawton deepened, the
fictional name for the Lawton family changed from Dudley to Walton.
Annie Fellows Johnston talks about her use of Fanny Craig, the Culbertson
boys and Edgewood as the inspiration for “Two Little Knights of Kentucky” in
her autobiography, “The Land of the Little Colonel”:
The following
summer I wrote "Two Little Knights of Kentucky." It was suggested by
a picture I had seen of two of Miss Fanny Craig's nephews, handsome
aristocratic little fellows. I took Miss Fanny for the Miss Allison
of the story, and located the scene at her place. I had seen a
trained bear tramping through the country with its trainer the
winter before. Jonesy was straight from the Chicago slums.
This passage from
Chapter II of “Two Little Knights
of Kentucky” offers a fairly accurate depiction of both Edgewood and
life in Pewee Valley at the time the book
was written:
…"I thought you
have always wanted to see mamma's old home, and the places you have
heard so much about. There are all the old toys in the nursery that
we had when we were children, and the grape-vine swing in the
orchard, and the mill-stream where we fished, and the beech-woods
where we had such delightful picnics. I thought it would be so nice
for you to do all the same things that made me so happy when I was a
child, and go to school in the same old Girls' College and know all
the dear old neighbours that I knew. Wouldn't my little girl like
that?"
…It was not that
she did not enjoy being at her grandmother's. She liked the great
gray house whose square corner tower and overhanging vines made it
look like an old castle. She liked the comfort and elegance of the
big, stately rooms, and she had her grandmother's own pride in the
old family portraits and the beautiful carved furniture. The negro
servants seemed so queer and funny to her that she found them a
great source of amusement, and her Aunt Allison planned so many
pleasant occupations outside of school-hours that she scarcely had
time to get lonesome. But she had a shut-in feeling, like a wild
bird in a cage, and sometimes the longing for liberty which her
mother had allowed her made her fret against the thousand little
proprieties she had to observe. Sometimes when she went tipping over
the polished floors of the long drawing room, and caught sight of
herself in one of the big mirrors, she felt that she was not herself
at all, but somebody in a story…
…. Since the
boys had come, Virginia had not had a single homesick moment. While
she was at school in the primary department of the Girls' College,
Malcolm and Keith were reciting their lessons to the old minister
who lived across the road from Mrs. MacIntyre's…
As in “Two Little Knights,” the real Edgewood was located across Central
Avenue from the Pewee Valley
Presbyterian Church. The “old minister” across the road was undoubtedly
the Rev. James Curry Randolph, who was living in the manse beside the church
from 1892-1899 and was 69 years old when the book was published.
There was a mill-stream in the Rollington area, within a few miles of
the house, and Annie Fellows Johnston later used
the Old Mill as the setting
for a picnic in “The Little Colonel’s House Party,”
published in 1900. Also real was the old Girls’ College, actually the
Kentucky College for Young Ladies on
Ashwood (now Ash) Avenue. It later became the setting for “The
Little Colonel at Boarding-School,” published in 1903.
Christmas card showing Edgewood’s stone entrance posts on
Central Avenue. The Christmas card was sent out by the
Sedleys, who purchased Edgewood and remodeled the interior
after Fannie Craig’s death in 1933. Thanks to Beverly Busch,
niece of Mrs. Sedley, for sharing this with us.
While Annie Fellows Johnston describes the fictional Edgewood as having a
square corner tower, the real Edgewood was “an imposing two-story L-shaped
Italianate house built of masonry brick,” according to “Historic Pewee
Valley,” pages 34 and 37. Her portrayal of the home’s interior, however, is
quite accurate, from the stately old rooms, first-floor library and long
drawing room to the back staircase and little-used bedroom in the north wing
where Keith and Malcolm hid the bear.
At one time, the Craig family owned about 50 acres,
bounded roughly by what is now Peace Lane, Central Avenue, Rest Cottage Lane
and Woodside. Over the years,
the Craig's sold off about half the property, part of it to the owner of
Twigmore . In addition to the house, there were several other
structures on their acreage, including a barn, some wooden slave cabins, and
two other sites mentioned in “Two Little Knights:”
the spring-house near the
cabin where Jonesy almost dies during the fire and the spring where Keith
and Malcolm tie up Ginger and forget about her during a game of Indian.
Around 1902, Miss Fannie Craig built a school house on the property which
served as the new home of the
Villa Ridge School. The school house was
demolished around 1988, because it stood in the way of a new housing
development.
Edgewood itself was also slated for demolition to make way for the new
Edgewood Manor subdivision. Thanks to the developer, Gregory Esposito, who
agreed to give the house to anyone who would move it, and "die-hard
Victorians" David and Donna Russell who actually bore the tremendous expense
involved, the house was saved and moved to a nearby lot over the winter of
1987-88. The move only covered about 160 feet, but took about six weeks.
The Russells restored the house and have been living there ever since.
1980s views of
the house being moved
Edgewood shortly after its
move
While the Craig family made Edgewood famous worldwide, its previous
owner, newspaper publisher
Walter Newman Haldeman , made it somewhat notorious during the Civil
War.
click here to continue to page 2 of Edgewood and the Haldeman story >
and ending with views of Edgewood today
Page by Donna Russell, owner of
Edgewood
This Site:
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Johnston,
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Original Little Colonel Book Series)
The Little Colonel (link to U. Penn))
The
Giant Scissors
Two Little
Knights of Kentucky
The Little Colonel's
House Party
The Little Colonel's
Holidays
The Little Colonel's Hero
The Little Colonel
at Boarding-School
The Little Colonel in
Arizona
The Little
Colonel's Christmas Vacation
The Little Colonel, Maid of
Honor
The Little Colonel's
Knight Comes Riding
Mary Ware, The Little Colonel's
Chum
Mary Ware in Texas
Mary Ware's Promised Land
Check our home page for more titles by AFJ on other sites
The People & Characters:
The Little Colonel, Papa
Jack and Mrs. Sherman, The
Old Colonel, Two Little
Knights of Kentucky,
Two Little Knights of Kentucky(2),
Uncle Sidney & Aunt
Elise, parents of the Two Little Knights of Kentucky,
Grandmother McIntyre,
Aunt Allison, The
Waltons, Rob and Anna
Moore, Betty,
Joyce Ware,
Jack Ware, Mom Beck,
Walker, Katherine Marks,
Gay Melville,
The Lees of Arizona,
Small Parts
Their Final Resting Places
The Places: in Pewee (Lloydsboro) Valley:
Map,
Map 2,
Where it all began, The Locust,
The Beeches
Edgewood,
The Little Colonel's Cottage,
The Railroad Station,
"Lloydsboro Seminary",
Clovercroft, The
Post Office, Churches,
The Haunted House at Hartwell Hollow,
Confederate Home
Rollington,
Minor Places In Old Louisville:
The Culbertson
Mansion, "Home of a Hero" Elsewhere:
The Cuckoo's Nest (Indiana),
Lee's Ranch,
Camelback Mountain &
Hole-in-Rock (Arizona),
San Antonio and
The Little Town of Bauer (Boerne),
Texas,
The Gate of the Giant Scissors (France)
Letters from Annie
Fellows Johnston and "Mrs Walton"
Scrapbook
Links
Cooking with The Little Colonel
Guest Book
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1998-2007 LittleColonel.com
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