HISTORY
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TIMELINE
1832
The Treaty of Pontotoc cedes Chickasaw land in north Mississippi to the state. Ker Boyer, Leroy M. Wiley, and Malachi B. Harmer acquire the eventual Greenfield Farm land as an investment.
1875
F.C. Parks buys the property. His family is an arguable model for the Snopes family in Faulkner’s fiction. The Parks family builds a farmhouse and other structures.
1897
William Faulkner is born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, twenty-three miles east of the farm.
1925
Whites lynch a Black man, L.Q. Ivy, across the Union County line, about five miles east of Greenfield Farm.
1938
William Faulkner sells the movie rights to The Unvanquished to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $25,000. He buys 362 acres 15 miles east of Oxford, on the road to his birthplace of New Albany.
1938
John Falkner, brother to William, moves his family into the farmhouse and begins repairs and renovations. Ned Barnett moves his family to a cabin on the farm, where they feed cows and mules and raise crops.
1938-1962
Farmers, including the McJunkins family, raise corn, cotton, and mules.
1947
Ned Barnett, who worked with four generations of the Fa(u)lkner family, dies.
1951
John Faulkner publishes his novel, Cabin Road, set largely at Greenfield Farm.
1962
William Faulkner dies. His daughter Jill Faulkner inherits Greenfield Farm.
1965-1990
Greenfield Farm passes through the hands of various owners, including First National Bank of Oxford.
1969
Lawrence Arenza “Renzi McJunkins, longtime Greenfield Farm worker and onetime resident of the farmhouse, dies.
1974
The annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference stages its first picnic at Greenfield Farm.
1992 (estimated)
Faulkner’s hunting cabin,
“the lodge,” burns.
1990
The University of Mississippi Foundation acquires 20.4 acres of the Greenfield Farm property.
1993
Community members and University of Mississippi leaders propose but fail to open a “Living History Museum for the Preservation of Southern Culture.”
2012
The annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference stages its last picnic at Greenfield Farm.
2022
The Mississippi Lab at the University of Mississippi begins research and planning to redevelop Greenfield Farm as a Writers Residency.
2025-26
Construction of Greenfield Farm Writers Residency begins on new buildings and the restoration of two buildings.
2026-27
Greenfield Farm Writers Residency welcomes its first cohort.
Greenfield Farm is now featured in The Mississippi Encyclopedia. Read more about the history here.
