Enjoy a slice of cake and history as the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife Museum celebrates “Gone With the Wind’s” 70th anniversary and Margaret Mitchell’s 106th birthday on Sat., Nov. 11. David O’Connell, author of “The Irish Roots of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind,” will be available from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for a book signing.

The museum boasts several famous families who have occupied the property since 1855. The house has ties “Doc” Holliday and Margaret Mitchell and the “Gone With the Wind” room serves as a tribute to this prominent writer. Mitchell’s great grandparents, the Fitzgeralds, are laid to rest across the street at the Historic City Cemetery.

O’Connell is a professor of French at Georgia State University, where he has taught since 1988. He previously taught at Princeton University. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1966 where he was a National Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellow. He conducted his doctoral research in Paris as a Fulbright scholar.

He has held grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society and the American Council of Learned Societies. He has published over 40 learned articles in scholarly books and journals, and over a hundred reviews. Since 1992, he has held the rank of "chevalier" in the French Ministry of Education's Ordre des Palmes Académiques.

The Holliday-Dorsey-Fife Museum is a Greek revival antebellum house that has long been a city landmark. Built in 1855, by the Holliday family, the house derives its name from the three main owners that dwelled there: John Stiles Holliday, a prominent physician in Fayetteville and uncle of the infamous John Henry “Doc” Holliday; Solomon Dawson Dorsey, a Colonel of the State Militia during the War Between the States who helped enlist volunteers for the Confederacy; and Robert E. Lee Fife, a former Fayetteville City Council member was the patriarch of the last family to occupy the house as a residence.

Also, it shares an association with several well-known local historical figures such as Margaret Mitchell, Dr. Crawford Williamson Long and former Governor Dorsey. The museum is located at 140 Lanier Ave. West, Fayetteville, Ga. and is open Thur.-Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults and $2 for children. For further information, call Fayetteville Main Street at 770-719-4173.

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