Gay also published a book of poetry in 1858, which she republished after the war to raise money to help support her mother and sister.

Gay raised thousands of dollars to pay for a fence and gate at the newly established McGavock Confederate Cemetery in 1866 in Franklin, Tennessee.

When Stokes died in 1850, Gay's newly widowed mother moved with her three children to a house on Marshall Street in Decatur, Georgia.

[2] During the Civil War, Mary Gay was a supporter of the Confederacy and refused to leave her house when Union Army soldiers took over the area.

[3] Her only brother, Thomas Stokes, served under Gen. John Bell Hood in the Confederate Army and died in the Battle of Franklin in late 1864.

[6] Gay reprinted her book Prose and Poetry (1858) after the war and marketed it "aggressively" in order to support her family.

"[8] In 1892, Gay published Life in Dixie During the War based on her memories, her half-sister Missouria's journal, and letters from her half-brother Thomas.

[9] Gay also wrote a novel, The Transplanted: A Story of Dixie Before the War (1907), with an introduction by Walter Neale, the New York publisher.

[10] Historians have explored the important role of planter and middle-class women in creating the memory and history of the American Civil War.

For instance, the United Daughters of the Confederacy had organized, initially to raise funds to get the Confederate dead decently buried in cemeteries.