Wednesday November 21, 1920, the day before Thanksgiving, was a sad day for the community of Dunwoody, Georgia. A boiler explosion caused the death of three Dunwoody men that day. The boiler was located at the Cheek mills on the southeast corner of the Mount Vernon Road and Chamblee Dunwoody intersection. In the small farming community, everyone was affected by the loss.

In early 1943, 500 WAVES were brought to Atlanta, first training downtown and staying at the Biltmore Hotel while barracks were built to house them at Naval Air Station Atlanta. The station was not physically located in Atlanta, but in Chamblee, Georgia. It was on land that is now DeKalb Peachtree Airport. (Atlanta Constitution, January 31, 1943, “WAVES Begin Trainer School Tomorrow with Class of 500”)

The new search resulted in his World War I draft registration card, completed under the name of Nils Edwin Burton Berglund. He worked as a pattern maker at a shoe factory. A quick search of shoe factories in Brockton, Massachusetts around the time of WWI shows that the town was known for its shoe manufacturing companies. He was born May 15, 1896. This was slightly off from my usual guess of 1895 for the birth year of WWI soldiers.

Then I hit the jackpot on newspapers.com! I came across the small piece below about Berglund written in April of 1919. Note how the spelling of his name is once again an issue.

Prior to the Civil War, the owners of the Roswell Manufacturing Company determined that a railroad to carry goods produced in their mills to Atlanta would be great for business. Grading work began to prepare for tracks, but that work was halted with the onset of the war.

The bicentennial year of 1976 was the occasion of the first Fourth of July parade in Dunwoody. The parade was held on Saturday, July 3. The Honorary Grand Marshal that year was 88-year-old Effie Spruill Carpenter.

I came across an Atlanta Constitution article from 1942 that announced women working as Link flight trainer instructors, teaching pilots blind flying using the Link trainer machine. The instructors also taught women who were part of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), who in turn were sent across the country to be instructors.

3600 Black recuits were sent to Camp Gordon for training. Camp Gordon was a World War I encampment built in early 1917 on land that now includes DeKalb-Peachtree Airport located in Chamblee, Georgia.

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope came to Brookhaven in 1943 for a golf match fundraiser. The match was held at Capital City Club, formerly known as Brookhaven Country Club, to benefit the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. Bing Crosby and Ed Dudley played as a team against Bob Hope and Johnny Bulla on a Sunday afternoon in May.

Obediah and Salina acquired 1,400 acres through the years. They had a general store and post office on their property. At the time, the property was part of the Grogans District of Milton County and the post office was known as Grogans. When Obediah died in 1894, most of his land was sold, but his son Robert Lee Copeland bought 50 acres to keep for himself, including the house and well. Robert Lee Copeland’s daughter Lee Eula Copeland Hembree would remain in the home her entire life, from 1910 until 1995.