Betty Talmadge

Leila Elizabeth Talmadge (née Shingler; September 17, 1923 – November 7, 2005) was an American civic leader, author, socialite, landowner, and businesswoman.

In her later life, she purchased Rural Home, the plantation of Margaret Mitchell's family, but died before she could finish restoring it.

[1][3] Her grandfather was in the cotton and lumber businesses and owned a chain of roadside stores that sold pecan products.

[2] Talmadge was a personal friend and bridge partner of Lady Bird Johnson, who gifted her a metal bust of President Lyndon B.

[7] The settlement also declared that her ex-husband was responsible for paying her portion of the estate's property tax and that he must assist in her meat brokerage business by helping keep existing customers and cultivating new clients.

[3] She also owned and operated Betty Talmadge Enterprises, which specialized in Southern-style entertaining and hostessing.

[17] Talmadge had a small role, as Sarah, in the 1984 made-for-television drama film The Baron and the Kid.

[18] In July 1980, Talmadge bought Rural Home, a 19th-century plantation house in Clayton County that was the childhood home of Margaret Mitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens, and the basis for Mitchell's Tara in Gone With the Wind.

[19][20] She had the house moved from its location near Jonesboro closer to her plantation home in nearby Lovejoy.

[21][22] Talmadge died at Lovejoy Plantation on November 7, 2005, before finishing her plans for Rural Home.