Wednesday, January 30, 2002
|
Wednesday, January 30, 2002 |
|
'GWTW' researcher checks Fayette's connections By CAROLYN
CARY
Kentucky college professor Marianne Walker, author of "Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh, the Love Story Behind Gone with the Wind," visited Fayetteville recently in search of information on Mitchell's family. The 500-page tome is the story of Mitchell's marriages, first to "Red" Upshaw, and then to the best man at that wedding, John Marsh. Upshaw was a shortsighted, cruel individual who left Mitchell after a few months of marriage, came back briefly and then was never seen again, according to Walker. Marsh, who had loved her from the first moment he saw her, devoted the 24 years of their marriage to her and her project of writing a book. He was in public relations and a good editor and proved invaluable to the project, Walker says. Walker was especially interested in Philip Fitzgerald, the great-grandfather of Mitchell, on her mother's side of the family. Fitzgerald came to Fayette County in the late 1820s or early 1830s and owned a number of parcels of land both in Fayetteville and in the rural area. He eventually settled on 1,000 acres just off McDonough Road, at the current Fayette/Clayton county line. It is believed that the Fitzgeralds were the prototypes for the O'Haras in "Gone with the Wind." One of Fitzgerald's seven daughters, Anne Elizabeth Fitzgerald, married John Stephens. They had a daughter, Maybelle, who married Eugene Mitchell. Their first child was Stephens Mitchell, and then Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell, who was five years younger than her brother. When GWTW was published in 1936, "Peggy" Mitchell was having a soda in a drugstore in Fayetteville on the west side of the old courthouse, and struck up a conversation with the library ladies, several women who had been trying for years to establish a town library. From that date until her death in 1949, she sent the ladies an average of $500 a year toward their effort. When that library was finally built in 1948, it was named the Margaret Mitchell Library, with her permission. When several Fayette countians got together and established the county's sesquicentennial in 1971, they wanted to show "Gone with the Wind." When the studio was not cooperative, Stephens was a big help in obtaining a copy of GWTW posthaste. This was several years before there was a movie theater in the county, and it had to be shown at the Sams Auditorium. The Fitzgeralds and the Mitchells have long been a part of Fayette County history. With author Walker deep in local research, books on those subjects will likely continue. |
