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.

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