[6] Her grandfather, Russell Crawford Mitchell, of Atlanta, enlisted in the Confederate States Army on June 24, 1861, and served in Hood's Texas Brigade.

[4][8][9] Mitchell's maternal great-grandfather, Philip Fitzgerald, emigrated from Ireland and eventually settled on a slaveholding plantation, Rural Home, near Jonesboro, Georgia, where he had one son and seven daughters with his wife, Elenor McGahan, who was from an Irish Catholic family with ties to Colonial Maryland.

John Stephens was a prosperous real estate developer after the Civil War and one of the founders of the Gate City Street Railroad (1881), a mule-drawn Atlanta trolley system.

After gaining control of her father Philip Fitzgerald's money after he died, she splurged on her younger daughters, including Margaret's mother, and sent them to finishing school in the north.

[20] She was raised in an era when children were "seen and not heard" and was not allowed to express her personality by running and screaming on Sunday afternoons while her family was visiting relatives.

[19][15]: 413 May Belle Mitchell was "hissing blood-curdling threats" to her daughter to make her behave the evening she took her to a women's suffrage rally led by Carrie Chapman Catt.

May Belle Mitchell was president of the Atlanta Woman's Suffrage League (1915), co-founder of Georgia's division of the League of Women Voters, chairwoman of press publicity for the Georgia Mothers' Congress and Parent Teacher Association, a member of the Pioneer Society, the Atlanta Woman's Club, and several Catholic and literary societies.

Reportedly, Eugene Mitchell received a whipping on the first day he attended school and the mental impression of the thrashing lasted far longer than the physical marks.

The pretty young hostess was a demure Martha Washington in flowered crepe gown over a pink silk petticoat and her powdered hair was worn high.

She hears her older sister being raped and shoots the rapist:[52] Coldly, dispassionately she viewed him, the chill steel of the gun giving her confidence.

)[58][59] During her years at Washington Seminary, Mitchell's brother, Stephens, was away studying at Harvard College (1915–1917), and he left in May 1917 to enlist in the army, about a month after the U.S. declared war on Germany.

He set sail for France in April 1918, participated in engagements in the Lagny and Marbache sectors, then returned to Georgia in October as a training instructor.

[63] As Henry waited in the Verdun trenches, shortly before being wounded, he composed a poem on a leaf torn from his field notebook, found later among his effects.

The last stanza of Lieutenant Clifford W. Henry's poem follows: If "out of luck" at duty's call In glorious action I should fall At God's behest,

Henry repeatedly advanced in front of the platoon he commanded, drawing machine-gun fire so that the German nests could be located and wiped out by his men.

[69] Mitchell had vague aspirations of a career in psychiatry,[70] but her future was derailed by an event that killed over fifty million people worldwide, the 1918 flu pandemic.

Margaret began using the name "Peggy" at Washington Seminary, and the abbreviated form "Peg" at Smith College, when she found an icon for herself in the mythological winged horse, "Pegasus", that inspires poets.

While still legally married to Upshaw and needing income for herself,[87] Mitchell got a job writing feature articles for The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine.

[88] Medora Field Perkerson, who hired Mitchell said: There had been some skepticism on the Atlanta Journal Magazine staff when Peggy came to work as a reporter.

In an article titled, Bridesmaid of Eighty-Seven Recalls Mittie Roosevelt's Wedding,[74]: 144–151  she wrote of a white-columned mansion in which lived the last surviving bridesmaid at Theodore Roosevelt's mother's wedding: The tall white columns glimpsed through the dark green of cedar foliage, the wide veranda encircling the house, the stately silence engendered by the century-old oaks evoke memories of Thomas Nelson Page's On Virginia.

The other women were: Nancy Hart, Lucy Mathilda Kenny (also known as Private Bill Thompson of the Confederate States Army) and Mary Musgrove.

[74]: xx  Several months after marrying John Marsh, Mitchell quit due to an ankle injury that would not heal properly and chose to become a full-time wife.

[52] During the time Mitchell worked for the Atlanta Journal, she wrote 129 feature articles, 85 news stories, and several book reviews.

[91] Mitchell developed an appreciation for the works of Southern writer James Branch Cabell, and his 1919 classic, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice.

The narrator of the tale is Billy Duncan, "a rough, hardened soldier of fortune",[48]: 97  who is frequently involved in fights that leave him near death.

[48]: 99 Mardo's desires are similar to those of Rhett Butler in his ardent pursuit of Scarlett O'Hara in Mitchell's epic novel, Gone with the Wind.

[97] I had every detail clear in my mind before I sat down to the typewriter.In May 1926, after Mitchell had left her job at the Atlanta Journal and was recovering at home from her ankle injury, she wrote a society column for the Sunday Magazine, "Elizabeth Bennet's Gossip", which she continued to write until August.

After Latham agreed to publish the book, Mitchell worked for another six months checking the historical references and rewriting the opening chapter several times.

[15]: 518 The USS Atlanta (CL-51) was a light cruiser used as an anti-aircraft ship of the United States Navy sponsored by Margaret Mitchell and used in the naval Battle of Midway and the Eastern Solomons.

Atlanta was a member of task forces protecting fast carriers, was operating off the coast of Honshū when the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945, and earned two battle stars.