Annie Fitzgerald Stephens.

About Annie Fitzgerald Stephens

Annie Elizabeth Fitzgerald Stephens was an American landowner, businesswoman, and political activist. She was born to a prominent planting family in Clayton County, Georgia, and grew up on the family plantation Rural Home. The daughter of an Irish immigrant, she was a devout Catholic. Stephens was involved in real estate endeavors in Atlanta and sued the federal government after General William Tecumseh Sherman's Siege of Atlanta, during the American Civil War, damaged some of her properties. Some historians, literary critics, and film critics, including Molly Haskell, consider her to be the inspiration behind the fictional character Scarlett O'Hara, from Stephens' granddaughter Margaret Mitchell's novel, Gone with the Wind.