Rowan Oak

Oxford stands on land the Chickasaw ceded in 1832, and the first title to this tract, a patent issued that year, went to a Choctaw named E-Ah-Nah-Yea, who deeded it to a land company in 1836. Robert Sheegog bought it in December 1844 and built the two-story Greek Revival house with four Doric columns on the porch. The Bailey family owned it from 1872 to 1923.

William Faulkner bought the place in 1930, named it Rowan Oak the next year and lived here until his death in 1962. He rebuilt the old servants' quarters and put up a barn for his horses himself in 1957. Caroline Barr, a former slave who had helped raise Faulkner, his brothers and later his daughter Jill, lived in those quarters from 1930 to 1940, and her funeral viewing was held in the parlor. In the study he added after 1950, the plot of A Fable is written directly on the wall in graphite and red grease pencil, a method he took up after a fan blew his taped paper outline away. The days run Monday through Sunday, matching the novel's Holy Week.

The university rented the house from Estelle Faulkner after his death and bought it in 1972 from their daughter, Jill Faulkner Summers. Much of the family's furniture is still inside. Behind the house are 29 acres of woods that Faulkner let grow wild, and the grounds can be walked even when the house is closed.