Mary Ann Harris Gay

Mary Ann Harris Gay (March 18, 1829 – November 21, 1918) was an American writer and poet from Decatur, Georgia, known for her memoir Life in Dixie During the War (1897) about her life in Atlanta during the American Civil War. Author Margaret Mitchell said Gay's memoir inspired some passages in her novel Gone with the Wind (1936). Gay also published a book of poetry in 1858, which she republished after the war to raise money to help support her mother and sister.

Gay was a supporter of the Confederacy, and after the end of the war, was active in efforts to preserve Confederate battlefields and construct Confederate monuments and cemeteries. Gay raised thousands of dollars to pay for a fence and gate at the newly established McGavock Confederate Cemetery in 1866 in Franklin, Tennessee. Her brother was among the nearly 2,000 Confederate soldiers reinterred there from temporary battlefield graves.

In 1997, Gay was named a Georgia Woman of Achievement. The Mary Gay House, her home during and after the Civil War, has been preserved in downtown Decatur. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.