Time sweeps everything away . . .
Scarlett O’Hara was correct. The past seems to dissipate in the winds of time. The old Fitzgerald home in Clayton County collapsed under the weight of time. The glamorous days of the past are gone. Only a plank-board frame remains of the once beautiful ante-bellum home and nearby barn over hung by the straggly limbs of scrub trees. There is a sunken well and in some places the ridges of tine marks made by the old plow are visible in the soil. A walk through the woods reveals an old-timey garden of jonquils, iris and ivy and leads a trail towards a pond over-grown with algae. As the weedy briar’s twine and the woods grow thicker in brush, it is not too difficult to imagine the work which was required to maintain this farm. Perhaps the nearby town of Jonesboro with his three-story buildings was a precurser to what was next, and that this too would be swept away by crowded cities and speeding vehicles. For sure, it was a generation unaware of how quickly it would be forgotten. We are the descendants of the children of the past. Almost two hundred years have slipped away, and here we are, experiencing the rhythm of the destruction and rebuilding of the 21st century. Fast forward a bit. As homes are scraped off the land and more structures erected, do we wonder if there will be any evidence of ourselves left to visit? Eudora Plantations Old Fairfield Plantation Ockstead and Bathurst Plantations When Families Left the Plantation White Hall Plantation The Plantation Journal of Seaborn Hawks Jarrell Plantation Davis Smith Plantation Meadow Garden, Home of George Walton Berckman Plantation in Augusta
Addendum — When Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone with the Wind, she included familiar family members. The father-figure Fitzgerald was the epitome of an family whose plantation was located near Jonesboro, Georgia on. Pictured is the old plantation on Mundys Mill Road which continues to survive in its dilapidated state. As expected they were Irish. This genealogy is traced and is available to members in the “genealogy vault” of Georgia Pioneers
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