Twelve Oaks

In Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind, Twelve Oaks is the plantation home of the Wilkes family in Clayton County, Georgia named for the twelve great oak trees that surround the family mansion in an almost perfect circle. Twelve Oaks was described as a "beautiful white-columned house that crowned the hill like a Greek Temple," having true southern charm and whimsy. Margaret Mitchell came up with the idea for The Twelve Oaks, and modeled the home after an actual antebellum mansion located in the historic area of Covington, Georgia. The home that was portrayed as Margaret Mitchell's Twelve Oaks in the film Gone with the Wind has been renovated and is now open as a bed and breakfast and event facility in Covington, Georgia, thirty minutes east of Atlanta.

John Wilkes is the elderly widowed patriarch of the family that includes his son Ashley and two unmarried daughters, India and Honey. The Wilkeses are among the wealthiest families in the county, with land, slaves and money second only to those of the large and hardy Tarleton family of Fairhill Plantation. 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.

When the novel begins, Gerald O'Hara is returning from Twelve Oaks (having purchased a slave to be wife to his devoted valet Pork) with the news that Ashley Wilkes, with whom 16-year-old Scarlett O'Hara is convinced she is in love, has just formally become engaged to his second cousin, Melanie Hamilton of Atlanta. In spite for what she perceives as Ashley spurning her, Scarlett accepts the impromptu proposal of Melanie's brother Charles, who was expected by all to marry Honey Wilkes (though changed to India in the film, which omits the character of Honey) and as such becomes a relative by marriage to both Melanie and Ashley.

Twelve Oaks suffers terribly in the war from the same shortages and privations as its neighbors. The family is also decimated as first Charles Hamilton dies of pneumonia, then John Wilkes is killed in combat (though elderly, he joined the Home Guard in defense of Atlanta). 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. Presumably the lands are lost to the same taxes that necessitate Scarlett's marriage to Frank Kennedy to save Tara.

...
Wikipedia