Atlanta, GA Taxicab Kills Margaret Mitchell, Aug 1949 - Funeral

Margaret Mitchell Burial Due Among Confederate Dead

ATLANTA, Aug. 17, (AP)--Margaret Mitchell will be buried Thursday in a cemetery where lie hundreds of the men of the Confederacy she wrote about in "Gone With the Wind."

Private funeral services are planned for the author, who died Tuesday, five days after she was hit by a speeding auto.

Near the Mitchell family lot in Oakland Cemetery is a monument to the South's unknown dead. Surrounding it are rows of small white headstones, marking the graves of other Confederate soldiers.

Abilene Reporter News, Abilene, TX 18 Aug 1949

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Margaret Mitchell Buried With Confederate Heroes

ATLANTA, Aug. 18. (UP)--Margaret Mitchell, 43, who achieved world renown as the author of "Gone With the Wind," was paid final respects today at simple, private funeral services.

A carefully-selected group of 300 relatives and close friends assembled in an ivy-covered chapel and heard Dean Raimundo de Ovies recite the Episcopal service for the dead.

Among them were devoted Negro servants of the tiny woman with the mind of an artist who penned one of the world's masterpieces of fiction. Bessie Jordan, Miss Mitchell's personal maid, wept softly, as organ music wafted through the serene chapel.

Skies were overcast during the early morning but the sun broke through shortly before the services opened and shone down through rain-washed skies.

The noted writer who died Tuesday of automobile accident injuries had in life shied away from the plaudits of millions of readers the world over. Her grieving family attempted to give her funeral an atmosphere of dignity and simplicity.

Her body then was borne through the streets of her beloved city, across Peachtree Street where a speeding car had cut her short her life and to century-old Oakland Cemetery, resting place also for 5,000 Confederate war heroes who were among this city's defenders in the battle of Atlanta.

There were no eulogies. By request, there were few flowers. Funeral services were brief.

Abilene Reporter News, Abilene, TX 18 Aug 1949