Twelve Oaks

The home that was portrayed as Margaret Mitchell's Twelve Oaks in the 1939 film has been renovated and is now open as a bed and breakfast and event facility in Covington, thirty minutes east of Atlanta.

The Wilkeses are revered by the county folks for their generosity and good nature, but also considered slightly odd because of their interests in reading books and traveling to the North to hear music and view paintings—this sophistication and elegance is attributed to their grandfather being from Virginia, and to them marrying their cousins.

The mansion is looted and burned by Union troops in 1864; Scarlett finds a straggling cow in the ruins of the home and enough beans and turnips for a meal from its slave quarters gardens but otherwise it is a total loss.

[1] Nevertheless, it is the stately mansion from the film with its imperial staircase and improbably high-ceilinged corridors (the product of early paint-on-glass style special effect rather than a physical set) that remains in the public mind as the iconic image of "Twelve Oaks" rather than the more restrained Greek revival house described in the novel.

She sent the clipping to Atlanta historian and Civil War authority, Wilbur Kurtz who was in Hollywood consulting with the set designers for Gone With the Wind, saying, ‘I like this for Ashley's home,’ referring to Twelve Oaks."