36. WREN'S NEST

(open weekdays 9-5; 25¢, children 10¢), 1050 Gordon St. SW., was for many years the home of Joel Chandler Harris, whose Uncle Remus stories are world famous for their humorous interpretation of Negro folklore. The two-story frame house, with many gables and elaborate scrollwork eaves, is now maintained as a public memorial to the author, and a number of his personal possessions are on exhibition here.

The place was given its name after a wren had built a nest in the mailbox; Harris refused to have the bird disturbed and let the broods be hatched there year after year. The writer, diffident and retiring at the height of his fame, often wandered off alone to observe the animals and birds on the surrounding land, which he called Snap Bean Farm. After his death in 1908 plans were made to purchase the house as a memorial, and funds were collected from various contributors including Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Carnegie, both friends of Harris. In 1914 Wren's Nest was formally dedicated by the Uncle Remus Memorial Association, its present owners. A walkway of pink Georgia marble, whose first stones were put down in 1932, has been laid to honor Harris and other Georgians who have become known for their writings.

Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) was born on an old plantation In Putnam County near Eatonton, Georgia. He passed his boyhood in poverty but, with much assistance from kindly neighbors, attended the local academy and in 1862 became printers devil on The Countryman, a weekly newspaper just established by Joseph Addison Turner on his plantation. The 14-year-old boy soon began to slip paragraphs of his own into the paper, thus winning the interest of Turner, who began to school him in the writing of sound English prose. Encouraged by Turner to find his material close to home, the young writer closely observed the animals and the Negroes in their cabins, which he later presented in a combination that made him famous.

At the close of the War between the States The Countryman ceased publication and Harris began a wandering career, forming connections with several newspapers. A co-worker on the Savannah Morning News describes his first sight of Harris: "...of small stature, red-haired, freckle-faced, and looked like a typical backwoodsman...., But that night when his copy came out, we knew he was a writer."

In 1876, when he was working on the Atlanta Constitution, the editor, Evan P. Howell, gave him the assignment of writing a daily story in Negro dialect. These sketches formed the nucleus of his first book, Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings, published in 1880. Other books followed, and the stories became famous not only for their dialect and Negro humor but for their permanent contribution to the study of African folklore. Thus the memory of Harris is kept alive both by children and by learned scholars.

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