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"Aunt Allison"
Fanny Craig
(February 9, 1859-March 14, 1933)
Portrait of Fanny
Craig from “History & Families Oldham County, Kentucky: The First
Century 1824-1924,” Oldham County Historical Society, 1996
Annie Fellows Johnston reveals the real-life inspiration for the
character of "Miss Allison" in the "Little Colonel" stories in her
foreword to "Mary Ware's Promised Land"
published in 1912:
"TO
MISS FANNY CRAIG
THE 'MISS
ALLISON' OF THESE STORIES,
WHOSE 'ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART' RUNS WIDE AND FAR
THROUGH ALL THIS HAPPY VALLEY"
Miss Fannie Craig, Pewee Valley
Kentucky
"Aunt Allison"
From The Sunday Herald Post
Louisville, Kentucky
December 23, 1928
Born in Louisville in 1859, Fannie Craig moved to
Lloydsboro/Pewee Valley with her family in about 1864 and lived in
Edgewood until her death in 1933. Annie
Fellows Johnston met the popular Pewee Valley schoolteacher while
staying at The Gables in the late 1890s
and first introduced her as a character in the stories in
Chapter II of
“Two Little Knights of Kentucky,”
published in 1899:
…As Miss
Allison stepped from the car to the station platform, she looked
around in vain for the boys who had promised to meet her. Her
arms were so full of bundles, as suburban passengers' usually
are, that she could not hold up her long broadcloth skirt, or
even turn her handsome fur collar higher over her ears. With a
shade of annoyance on her pretty face, she swept across the
platform and into the waitingroom, out of the cold.
Behind her
came a little girl about ten years old, as unlike her as
possible, although it was Virginia Dudley's ambition to be
exactly like her Aunt Allison. She wanted to be tall, and
slender, and grown up; Miss Allison was that, and yet she had
kept all her lively girlish ways, and a love of fun that made
her charming to everybody, young and old. Virginia longed for
wavy brown hair and white hands, and especially for a graceful,
easy manner.
Photos of Fanny Craig show that she looked very much as described
in the books – tall, slender and graceful with wavy brown hair and
white hands. And always elegantly dressed, thanks to clothes given
to her by her wealthy sister, Louise Culbertson -- “Aunt
Elise” in the stories.
Fannie Craig at home in
Edgewood's long drawing room,
known to the local children as the music room
Although Annie Fellows Johnston never provides any clues about
the fictional Aunt Allison’s vocation, we know that her real life
model was a graduate of the Kentucky College for Young Ladies -- “Lloydsboro
Seminary" in the books -- and later taught there herself. She
also taught music -- piano -- in Edgewood's long drawing room. After
the Kentucky College for Young Ladies closed, she opened the Villa
Ridge School behind her home. She was also a member of the Pewee
Valley Presbyterian
Church and served as librarian and organist as well as a Sunday
school teacher there for many years.
Famous Little
Colonel characters
help plant a tree, 1903
Fannie Craig is one of several famous Little Colonel
characters pictured in this 1903 tree planting
at the Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church, located across
from Edgewood's stone gates
The only reference Annie Fellows Johnston
makes to Aunt Allison's work as a teacher is in
Chapter IX of the "The
Little Colonel's House Party" is to her volunteer work with the
Valley's African American children:
...It was by
its weird light that the charades were played, when the feast
had been cleared away. Miss Allison arranged them. The actors
were all little negroes…
"It's Sylvia
Gibbs's family," explained Miss Allison, to the girls." Our
circle of King's Daughters had them under its wing all winter,
or they would have starved. When I discovered what heathen they
were, I turned missionary and taught them an hour every Sunday
afternoon. They will do anything for me now, and are such clever
little mimics that I know they can act the charades charmingly.
Besides, they will give us a cakewalk afterward, and sing for us
like nightingales."
This reference appears to be based on fact.
Pewee Valley photographer Kate Matthews
took a picture of Fanny Craig, below, teaching African American
children:
Fanny Craig teaching Pewee Valley’s African American children in a Kate Matthews
photograph.
From “Land of the Little Colonel,” published in 1974 by Mrs. John S. Smith
Annie Fellows Johnston also makes several
telling observations about the personality traits that made the
fictional Aunt Allison-- and her real life model -- so beloved
by the children of Lloydsboro Valley:
From
Chapter XII of "The
Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation:"
So it
happened that a little later, when Miss Allison crossed the road
to the post-office, and started up the path toward home, Lloyd
was with her, smiling happily over the prospect of spending the
day with the patron saint of all the Valley's merrymakings. From
Lloyd's earliest recollection, Miss Allison had been the life of
every party and picnic in the neighbourhood. She was everybody's
confidante. Like Shapur, who gathered something from the heart
of every rose to fill his crystal vase, so she had distilled
from all these disclosures the precious attar of sympathy, whose
sweetness won for her a way, and gained for her a welcome,
wherever she went.
And from Chapter X of
"The Little Colonel's Holidays:"
Although Miss
Allison was her mother's friend, Lloyd claimed her as her own
especial property. But all children did that. Such was the
charming interest with which she entered into comradeship with
every boy and girl in the Valley, that they counted her one of
themselves. A party without Miss Allison was not to be thought
of, and a picnic was sure to be a failure unless she was one of
the number.
The two little knights, Keith and
Malcolm, were privileged, by reason of family ties, to call her
auntie, but there were many like Lloyd who put her on a pedestal
in their affections, and claimed a kinship almost as dear.
Fanny Craig lived with her mother, Annie, and two brothers, Aleck
and Harry, who was simple-minded. Though she never married and had
children of her own, children were constantly present at Edgewood.
In addition to her work as a schoolteacher, Fanny helped raise her
niece, Alice Craig Peay, after her mother died, and almost certainly
helped care for Alice’s children after she married Frank Gatchel and
lived a few doors down the street at
Woodside.
Pewee Valley Historian Gin Chaudoin remembers being invited to
Edgewood as a child with her brother and sister to listen to Fanny
Craig read aloud. “If she hadn’t seen us for a few days, she would
call our mother and ask, ‘Are the children ill?’” she recalls. Fanny
often asked the children over after church and served them treats –
beaten biscuits and half-dollar sized brandied peaches topped with
whipped cream are some that Iva Barbee Morse and Gin Chaudoin
remember with relish. And Gin Chaudoin says Miss Craig kept a supply
of orange slices in Edgewood’s library to serve her little guests.
After Fanny’s mother, Annie
Craig died in 1914, Fanny was left with full responsibility for
her younger brother, Harry (born in 1864, his full name was Burr
Harrison McCown Craig,) although her brother Aleck was still alive.
(He died December 25, 1923.) In her last will and testament,
written October 1927, she makes specific provisions for him:
October 15, 1927
I, Fanny
Craig, being of sound mind, at the suggestion of my sister
Louise Culbertson, revoke any will
made by me formerly.
I here in
leave everything of which I am possessed my bonds in my side of
the box 1749 in the Fidelity & Columbia Trust Co., my place in
Pewee Valley and all the contents of the house and my share in
my Mother’s estate to my sister Alice’s grand-children Frances &
William Gatchel. I wish them to help support their Uncle Harry
as long as he lives and I wish them to give to their Aunts
Mary C. Lawton &
Louise Culbertson anything in the
house that they desire.
C.O.D.
If my
brother Harry outlives me, I wish the income of my estate to be
spent for his maintenances during his life, and at his death the
estate divided between
Frances Craig Gatchel and William Culbertson Gatchel
June 22, 1929
I name Frank Gatchel & Frances
Gatchel (Sampson) Executors of my estate without bond.
Signed by me,
Fanny Craig
Fortunately, Miss Fanny outlived Harry. He
died November 1, 1929 at age 65. Miss Fanny died about three and a
half years later, on March 14, 1933. Her obituary, which ran in the
Louisville “Courier-Journal,” is below:
MISS FANNY CRAIG EXPIRES AT
HOME
Miss Fanny Craig, 74 years old,
who formerly conducted a private school known as the Villa Ridge
School in Pewee Valley, died at 10:35 o’clock Tuesday night at
her home in Pewee Valley.
A life-long friend of Mrs. Annie
Fellows Johnston, the author, Miss Craig was the character known
as Miss Allison in Mrs. Johnston’s Little Colonel series, a
series of books for children.
Miss Craig was born in Louisville
in a house on the site where the Jefferson County Armory now
stands. She is survived by two sisters, Mrs. Henry W. Lawton of
Annapolis, Maryland and Mrs. S. A. Culbertson.
Playing the piano in
Edgewood’s drawing room
page by Donna Russell
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