Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was born on Tuesday, November 8, 1900, to Eugene Muse Mitchell and Maybelle Stephens Mitchell in the home of her maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens. The house was at 296 Cain Street, Atlanta, and the house was shared by Annie Stephens, and her daughter and son-in-law. They soon moved, however, to a house around the corner that Annie Stephens owned. A year later, Eugene Mitchell purchased a twelve roomed, two story house a few doors down on Jackson street.
Most girls from the Stephen's family were sent to convents for their education. Maybelle had attended one in Canada. Margaret's mother stood four feet, nine inches off the ground, had red hair and blue eyes. She was the president of 'one of Atlanta's most militant groups of suffragettes.' The meetings would often be held at the Mitchell home, where she would shout about the injustice cast upon women. Margaret and her brother, Stephens Alexander Mitchell, would watch from the top of the stairs, wide-eyed.
Eugene Mitchell saw his wife with astonished admiration. He was only five feet, eight inches tall, but did not find his size a barricade that stood between him and his life's goals. He was part of a successful law firm, in partnership with his brother Gordon. He did not share Maybelle's Catholic faith, but, nonetheless, the marriage was solid. They both were loyal to their family, if not the same church. Eugene was an expert in the history of Atlanta, liked reading, and was a clever business man.
Margaret's life now was not in the hands of her Grandmother Stephens since the move. Her mother was now in control, and nothing Margaret did appeared to please her mother, who was 'quick with the hairbrush whenever she thought her daughter was acting spoiled or ill-mannered.' Stephens, five years older than Margaret, was a fair-haired, pug nosed, short boy. Margaret had to fight for his attention. This meant trying to do things that even Stephens and his friends wouldn't try.
She loved her father dearly, but saw little of him. He had a soft voice, dark eyes, and a mustache that 'bristled against her cheek when he kissed her good-night.' Weekends were dedicated to his books. He was president of the Young Men's Library Association, and served on the board of trustees for the Carnegie Library.
For Stephen's eighth birthday, Maybelle had given him a Texas mustang. Margaret envied this of her brother, but could not even be seated on it as she was only three. She had strict orders to remain on the veranda while Stephens rode his mustang. One day, she watched this too long and ran inside to get warmed up. She stood over an open heating grate, where, unknown to the household, flames from the basement set her skirts on fire. Maybelle came running at her daughter's screams, and wrapped her child in blankets to smother at the fire. The servants poured water on her and she was taken to the hospital. Margaret had serious burns on her legs, but had few scars to show it.
While Margaret was bedridden, Grandmother Stephens would tell her of her own childhood to entertain the young girl. When Margaret was walking again, she wore Stephens' old pants to hide them. But she insisted on wearing them even after the bandages were removed, so no such accident could happen again. It was a source of embarrassment for Margaret. The trousers brought her closer to her brother and other neighborhood boys, but brought her farther away from the girls. Margaret was now allowed to feed the animals with her brother. The 'animals' were several ducks, a collie, two small alligators, and cats.
(This next section is straight from my research material. For the name of this book, please see the bottom of this page for the bibliography.)
'Often, as she later recalled, she would be "scooped up into a lap, told that [she] didn't look like a soul on either side of the family, and then forgotten for the rest of the afternoon while the gathering spiritedly refought the Civil War." An impressionable, sensitive child reared to believe children should be seen and not heard, she bore the discomfort of those afternoons in respectful silence as she sat "on bony knees, fat, slick taffeta laps, and soft, flowered muslin laps," not daring to wriggle for fear "of getting the flat side of a hairbrush where it would do the most good."
' "Calvary knees," she said, "were the worst knees of all. Calvary knees had the tendency to trot and bounce and bob in the midst of reminiscences and kept me from going to sleep."
'During these Sunday excursions she heard about battle wounds and the primitive way they were treated, how ladies nursed in hospitals, they way gangrene smelled, what measures were taken when the blockage got too tight for drugs and food and clothing to be brought in from abroad. She heard about the burning and looting of Atlanta and the way the refugees from the town had crowded the roads and the trains to Macon. And how her Grandfather Mitchell had walked nearly fifty miles after the Battle of Sharpsburg with two bullet wounds in his skull. She heard about Reconstruction, too. In fact, she heard all there was to hear about the Civil War except that the Confederates had lost it.
None of these happenings were discussed as having occurred forty years earlier, or even as particularly remarkable events; they were just a part of her family's lives. Gradually they became part of Margaret's life as well, so much a part that she grew to feel she must have experienced the most vivid of them.'
(I have stopped my quotes right from the text for now, but will continue in adding smaller quotes.)
At five, Margaret knew the names of all of the industries (in Atlanta) that had sprung up during the war and could 'rattle them off like the ABCs.' She retold the stories to her brother and his friends. Also when she was five, her father bought her a small roan plains pony. She sat straight in the saddle, riding so well that her father (after arguing with her mother) set up jumping bars for her. But the pony balked and she was ordered to abandon horseback riding. She instead rode with an old soldier who she called her "boon companion." This was put to an end when it was time for her to attend school.
(I spoke too soon, here is another long selection of quotes right from my book)
'Returning from her first day at North Boulevard School, Margaret told her mother that she hated arithmetic and did not want to go back. Maybelle's response was to bare her daughter's rear and give her a good whacking with a hairbrush. When she was done, she ordered Margaret into the Mitchells' stylish horse-drawn carriage, took the reins herself, and drove out toward Clayton County and the Fitzgerald farm at such a clip that Margaret gripped the seat in fear. Maybelle drove in silence as she followed the railroad tracks onto the Jonesboro road, where gnarled, ancient oaks now cast late-afternoon shadows. An unearthly stillness seemed to have settled over the countryside and, as the red sun slipped behind the hills, the tall pines that grew on their slopes became dark skeletal giants. Margaret, sensing the significance of this excursion, glanced at her mother in the shadowing red-rimmed twilight. Maybelle's eyes glinted with fierce emotion.
' "Fine and wealthy people once lived in those houses," she told the child, slowing the horses and pointing at the shabby former plantation houses they passed. "Now they are old ruins and some of them have been that way since Sherman marched through. Some fell to pieces when the families in them fell to pieces. See that one there?" she said as they passed a derelict farmstead. "The people who lived in that house were ruined with it."
'She wheeled the trembling child around to look toward the opposite side of the road and motioned to an old but well-tended dwelling. "Now, those folk stood as staunchly as their house did. You remember that, child -- that the world those people lived in was a secure world, just like yours is now. But theirs exploded right from underneath them. Your world will do that to you one day, too, and God help you, child, if you don't have some weapon to meet that new world. Education!" Maybelle bellowed in a voice that cut the silence of the country twilight. "People -- and especially women -- might as well consider they are lost without an education, both classical and practical. For all you're going to be left with after your world up ends will be what you do with your hands and what you have in your head. You will go back to school tomorrow," she ended harshly, "and you will conquer arithmetic."
'And with that, she let go of her daughter, grasped the reins, and, turning around, cracked the buggy whip and started swiftly and silently on the long ride home.'
(There, I have ended direct quotes again for now. Don't you think that was a harsh way to teach a child a lesson? Although it must have made an impact on her. If my mother did that to me, I would never forget, and maybe Maybelle knew that. Who knows?)
Many of Margaret's summers during her childhood were spent at "Rural Home," the farm in Jonesboro where her spinster aunts, Sis and Mamie Fitzgerald, lived. Margaret especially liked her Aunt Sis, who, even in middle age, was a 'beautiful woman with waving grey hair, large soft eyes, fair magnolia skin, and a winning slivery laugh.' She told Margaret about the Fitzgerald family history. Sepia photos of the family were kept on a table in the parlor, where Margaret was told about her ancestors. (I won't go into detail like the book does, but many of the ancestors resemble characters in "Gone With the Wind.")
**Margaret Mitchell (1910-1919)**
Bibliography
Edwards, Anne. Road to Tara - The Life of Margaret Mitchell. New York and New Haven: Ticknor & Fields, 1983.
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