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Gone With the Wind Country

by Kathleen Walls

Mural at the Road to Tara Museum

Want a real insight into what was in Margaret Mitchell's mind when she wrote Gone With T he Wind? Visit Jonesboro and you will get a pretty good idea of her characters, settings and background. First stop has to be the Road to Tara Museum housed in the old Jonesboro depot. It's filled with book and movie memorabilia related to the famous sage but more than that, it tells you a lot about Margaret Mitchell, the person.

 

Picture of the Fitzgerald Plantation at the Road to Tara Museum. The house is no longer standing.

In the South, if you want to understand a person, it helps to know who her people were and where they came from. Mitchell's grandfather was an Irish Catholic, Philip Fitzgerald, who owned a plantation near Jonesboro and was the father of seven girls.  Not too big a stretch to morph into Gerald O'Hara, Irish plantation owner and father of Scarlett, Colleen and SueEllen.

One visit to Stately Oaks and you will see the ghost of Tara. As one of the period costumed docents lead you through the plantation home, you expect to see Scarlett or Rhett to descend the stairs and welcome you.  The site is owned and maintained as a house museum by Historical Jonesboro/Clayton County, Inc. Stately Oaks Plantation House, which was built in 1839, is a perfect example of plain Greek revival architecture. Located off Jodeco Road in Jonesboro it and the other buildings on the complex reflect several periods of history.  The Bethel schoolhouse;the last one room school used in Clayton county; a tenant house and Juddy's County Store all recall life in the 19 th century.

Peter Bonner of Historical and Hysterical Tours,"Scarlett" and "Union officer"Art Carey in front of Stately Oaks

Another interesting slice of family history that Mitchell borrowed in GWTW relates to where she found some other interesting characters for her book. It's not a big stretch to assume she based the characters of Melanie and Ashley on her distant cousins, Mattie Holliday and Mattie's first cousin and love of her life, John Henry "Doc" Holliday. As everyone familiar with the famed gambler and gunfighter knows, He left home after he was not allowed to marry his cousin. Mattie later entered the convent and took the name Sister Melanie. The two corresponded for the remainder of Doc Holliday's life. When he died, his possessions, including his letters from Sister Melanie, were returned to the Holliday family. According to Peter Bonner of Historical and Hysterical Tours the family burned the letters claiming there was nothing of historical significance in them.

The tenant house at Stately Oaks

Not only will you find Tara in Jonesboro, but, Ashley Wilkes plantation, Twelve Oaks, is believed to be based on the Crawford-Talmadge Plantation nearby. General John Bell Hood's defeated army gathered there to regroup after the fall of Atlanta.

Warren House is another significant home of the period. This 1860 home was the most prominent landmark on the Jonesboro battlefield. First Confederate forces and then Union forces occupied it as their headquarters. It was also a hospital, and signatures of Union soldiers are still carved in the walls of an upstairs room. Unfortunately neither Crawford-Talmadge Plantation nor Warren House is open to the public at this time.

When there, make sure to visit the Patrick R. Cleburne C cemetery where many silent memories of the days leading to the famous burning of Atlanta lie buried with the 600 to 1,000 mostly unidentified Confederate defenders who fell at the Battle of Jonesboro. This area was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting. In fact, the Battle of Jonesboro, fought on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, 1864, is considered my most historians as one of the most important battles in the War Between the States . The Union victory here allowed General Sherman to cut off Atlanta, forcing the city to surrender—a major turning point in the war.

In 1969, Jonesboro, the book's setting for Tara, was designated by the Mitchell family as the "Official Home of Gone With The Wind." Historical and Hysterical Tours offers The Peter Bonner Gone With The Wind Tour, a narrated 70-minute tour via mini-bus and is a great way to enjoy the local history.

For more info:

http://www.visitscarlett.com

http://www.historicaljonesboro.org/

http://www.peterbonner.com/

 

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