I recently came across this postcard of a group of soldiers at Norcross Rifle Range and have been researching their names to learn who they were. They are from Company B, 325th Infantry, 82nd Division. I’ll return to this postcard later as more information is discovered, but for now I want to share what I’ve found about three of the men.

Thanks to L. C. Orr, I was able to learn the history of the land where Peachtree Charter Middle School is located on North Peachtree Road. Mr. Orr shared his memories of living in a two story farmhouse on the land between 1943 and 1948

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.

The Brookhaven Theatre at 4012 Peachtree Road opened in May 1938. The first film to be shown was Heidi, starring Shirley Temple. In the early years, tickets were twenty-five cents until 6:00 p.m.

Christmas in Connecticut starring Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan was playing at the Brookhaven Theatre in February of 1946. The original release was August of 1945.

According to the December 1917 issue of The City Builder, a publication of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, a Commission on Training Camp Activities was formed for World War I encampment Camp Gordon in Chamblee, Georgia, Fort McPherson, and the aviation program at Georgia Tech. The purpose of the committee was to “organize the social life of the communities…which will mean a healthy reaction upon the camps.” (The City Builder is available online as part of the Atlanta History Center archives)

If you were in Atlanta in 1954, you could have seen White Christmas at the Fox Theatre. The film was based around the song by the same name, which Irving Berlin wrote for Bing Crosby in 1940. Holiday Inn (1942) was the first film featuring the song White Christmas and the song won the Academy Award Best Music/Original Song category that year.

Around 1924, when the Roswell Railroad was no longer operational, the Dunwoody Depot was rolled up Chamblee-Dunwoody Road on logs to a new location. The Depot was originally located between where CVS and Chevron are today on Chamblee Dunwoody Road. The new location was the southwest corner of the intersection of Chamblee Dunwoody Road and Mount Vernon Road, where BP is today.

2015 marks 50 years since United States troops entered Vietnam and 40 years since the war ended. A group that has worked for years to promote patriotism, assist new veterans, and honor the families of those who lost their lives serving in Vietnam is the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association. Two members of that organization, Art Katz and Bryan Tate, shared some of their personal experiences from the war.

In 1917, the soldiers of Camp Gordon were having a Thanksgiving different than any other they ever experienced. Camp Gordon was a World War I encampment built earlier that year in Chamblee, Georgia. The soldiers missed their family and friends, but the camp made it a special occasion by planning a sumptuous Thanksgiving feast and printing a program with the menu.

This is the home of Carlton Renfroe, who moved there with his family in 1941. Mr. Renfroe, his parents, two brothers and three sisters lived in a home at the intersection of Techwood Drive and Harris Street in Atlanta prior to moving to Dunwoody. They had bought the Tilly Mill Road home in 1925, but Mr. Renfroe’s mother said she would only move there when the road had been paved and phone service was available. That happened in 1941 and the family became residents of Dunwoody.