Gerald O'Hara (died 1865) was an Irish immigrant planter in Georgia during the Old South era. He founded the successful Tara plantation near Jonesboro, transforming an absentee landlord's 640-acre plantation into a 1,000-acre plantation with 100 slaves. He died in a horse riding accident after the American Civil War's end.
Biography[]
Gerald O'Hara was born in Ireland to a Catholic family, and he worked as a peasant farmer before immigrating to the United States with his brothers. They settled near Savannah, Georgia in the American South, and O'Hara won a 640-acre plantation from an absentee owner in a poker game. He named it "Tara" after the ancient "Hill of Tara" in Ireland, and the 43-year-old O'Hara married the 15-year-old Ellen Robillard, receiving 20 slaves as a dowry; the plantation soon grew to 1,000 acres and 100 slaves. At the start of the American Civil War, O'Hara was an enthusiastic supporter of the Confederacy, but shortages caused by the Union blockade and the Confederate requisitioning of supplies and slaves diminished his family's once-lavish income and lifestyle. His plantation soon became inhabited only by himself, his family's sick women, and house slaves, and it was spared the torch during William T. Sherman's "March to the Sea" in 1864. However, the house was vandalized and looted, and the loss of his wife, combined with hopelessness, poverty, age, and alcoholism destroyed Gerald's sanity, and he was killed after he was thrown from his horse in an attempt to chase a scalawag from his land.