Roberts Drive in Dunwoody and Sandy Springs is named for the engineer of the Roswell Railroad Isaac (Ike) Roberts. He was the engineer for the entire time the railroad operated-1881 until 1921. People that worked with him and those that lived along the railroad called him Cap’n Ike. The railroad ran between Chamblee and Roswell, with stops at Wilson’s Mill, Dunwoody, and Powers Station.

The story of how Dunwoody got its name has been passed down from early families and it goes like this: Major Charles Archibald Alexander Dunwody applied for a post office for the area and an extra “o” was added to the name.

Carlton Renfroe, who has lived along Tilly Mill Road since 1941, has shared that the Tilly Mill was located in the area of the northeast corner at the intersection of Tilly Mill Road and North Peachtree Road. The Tilly home and school were further up Tilly Mill Road, closer to where it meets Peeler Road.

Earl and Vivian Lowrey Smith bought a summer home in Dunwoody, later making it their permanent home. The white painted Cape Cod style home sat among lovely oak trees on Chamblee Dunwoody Road just north of Vermack Road. Vivian Smith filled the home with fine antiques.

Earl Smith worked as a city salesman for Norris Candy, a large and successful candy manufacturer in the first half of the twentieth century.

Benjamin Franklin Burdett built a Colonial style, two story, red brick home in 1900 on the land where Mount Vernon Presbyterian School and Church are located today. The home had eleven rooms, four porches on the ground level, two porches on the second level, and white columns across the front. The bricks for the home were made on the property.

Dr. Thornwell Jacobs was the driving force behind the revival of Oglethorpe University in 1915 at their present location on Peachtree Road in Brookhaven. He first came to Agnes Scott College in 1909 to serve as their Executive Secretary. It was there that he met important contacts that would help him achieve his dream. Atlanta developer Samuel Inman was one of those people.

Beginning around 1915 and until the 1960’s, the land where the Dunwoody campus of Georgia State University is located belonged to the Womack family. William Womack and wife, Victoria Reed Womack, owned fifty acres at the corner of Tilly Mill Road and Womack Road, which was named for their family. The four room wood home sat on the west side of the Georgia Perimeter College campus, near the additional parking area. William and Victoria had three sons; Lester, Elmer and Harvey and three daughters; Georgia, Ola, and Corrie.

There were many dairies in DeKalb County in the 1930s and 1940s and a large portion of those were in Chamblee. According to A Century in North DeKalb: The Story of the First Baptist Church of Chamblee, there were 200 dairies in DeKalb County. DeKalb County was the largest producer of Grade A milk in the south and had more dairies than any other Georgia county.

A map of Chamblee dairies in 1939 shows thirty-three dairies.