Margaret MItchell Grave
by Joan Carroll
Title
Margaret MItchell Grave
Artist
Joan Carroll
Medium
Photograph - Digital Photograph
Description
In a rather plain section of historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta GA USA sits the grave of Margaret Mitchell, author of the famed book, Gone with the Wind. Everyone knows that fact, and diehard fans also know her personal history quite well. I was not among those diehard fans so I was surprised to see the Marsh surname on her gravestone, and even doubted I was in the correct place in the cemetery. But further checking with the Visitor Center and the map confirmed this was indeed the resting place of THE Margaret Mitchell. Margaret Mitchell was a Southerner and a lifelong resident and native of Atlanta, Georgia. She was born in 1900 into a wealthy and politically prominent family. Her father, Eugene Muse Mitchell, was an attorney, and her mother, Mary Isabel "May Belle" (or "Maybelle") Stephens, was a suffragist. She had two brothers, Russell Stephens Mitchell, who died in infancy in 1894, and Alexander Stephens Mitchell, born in 1896. In April 1922, Mitchell was seeing two men almost daily; one was Berrien �Red� Upshaw, whom she is thought to have met in 1917 at a dance hosted by the parents of one of her friends, and the other, Upshaw's roommate and friend, John R. Marsh, a copy editor from Kentucky who worked for the Associated Press. Upshaw was an Atlanta boy, a few months younger than Mitchell. In 1919 he was appointed to the United States Naval Academy, but resigned for academic deficiencies on January 5, 1920. He was readmitted in May, then 19 years-old, and spent two months at sea before resigning a second time on September 1, 1920.[105] Unsuccessful in his educational pursuits and with no job, in 1922 Upshaw earned money bootlegging alcohol out of the Georgia mountains. Although her family disapproved, Peggy and Red married on September 2, 1922, and the best man at their wedding was John Marsh, who would become her second husband. The couple resided at the Mitchell home with her father. By December the marriage to Upshaw had dissolved and he left. Mitchell suffered physical and emotional abuse, the result of Upshaw's alcoholism and violent temper. Upshaw agreed to an uncontested divorce after John Marsh gave him a loan and Mitchell agreed not to press assault charges against him. Upshaw and Mitchell were divorced on October 16, 1924. On July 4, 1925, 24-year-old Margaret Mitchell and 29-year-old John Marsh were married in the Unitarian-Universalist Church. The Marshes made their home at the Crescent Apartments in Atlanta, taking occupancy of Apt. 1, which they affectionately named "The Dump" (now the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum).
FEATURED PHOTO, Heroes and Heroines group, 5/20/14
Uploaded
May 20th, 2014
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Viewed 4,039 Times - Last Visitor from Ottawa, ON - Canada on 04/19/2024 at 8:17 AM
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