Zelda Fitzgerald in a 1918 photo from her high school yearbook (left) and at 19 years old in a dance costume (right) Born in Montgomery, Alabama, on July 24, 1900, Zelda Sayre was the youngest of six children.[1] Her parents were Episcopalians.[29] Her mother, Minerva Buckner "Minnie" Machen, named her daughter after the gypsy heroine in a novel, presumably Jane Howard's "Zelda: A Tale of the Mass