World War II veteran and Dachau liberator Hilbert Margol shared his experiences with me in February of 2021. It was an honor to meet Hilbert Margol, World War II veteran who has lived in Dunwoody since 1984, thanks to a Zoom call arranged by Jan Slimming and the Churchill Society-Atlanta Chapter. He shared with the group the story of how he and his brother came to be at Dachau on April 29, 1945-liberation day.

Harts Mill Road is named for Dr. C. C. Hart-physician, landowner, and mill owner. The road runs between Chamblee Dunwoody Road and Ashford Dunwoody Road. A section of Harts Mill Road serves as the line between the two cities of Chamblee and Brookhaven. The same road was previously called Sexton Road, named for the Sexton family.

Update: Katherine Geffcken was recently interviewed by Victoria Lemos on her December 3, 2021 podcast, Archive Atlanta. The summer home in Dunwoody which I write about below is briefly mentioned and it is nice to hear Ms. Geffcken talk about growing up in Atlanta and her experience at Girls High School, Agnes Scott College, and Bryn Mawr College.

A home on West Peachtree Road and a summer cottage off Spalding Drive may sound strange today, but it was not unusual in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The historic house at 8059 Kenstone Court was just such a cottage and there were several others in the area along Chamblee Dunwoody Road and Spalding Drive.

Katherine Geffcken, one of Dr. William and Elizabeth Geffcken’s daughters, shared her memories of the home and area when she visited her former home.

Several major events occurred in the U. S. in the year 1969. That was the year of the Apollo 11 moon landing and walk. It was also the year of Woodstock and the first Boeing 747 flight. Richard Nixon was President and the Vietnam War continued.

Atlanta was changing quite a bit in the year 1969.

Many families came to Georgia at that time from South Carolina and other states in search of land. Stephen and Elizabeth Martin and their children were one of those families. The Stephen Martin Cemetery in Dunwoody is named for this early pioneer who traveled from South Carolina to Dunwoody around 1830. The cemetery is located between Hammond Drive and I-285, behind a shopping center. Dunwoody Preservation Trust has been caring for the cemetery for several years, including keeping the grass cut and maintaining a kiosk with information and a guest log book.

Beginning in 1923, Annie Houze Cook taught first grade at Hammond Elementary School in Sandy Springs and continued until Fulton County said she had to retire in 1948. When she retired, she immediately announced the opening of her kindergarten. Classes were held at what was then known as Providence Baptist Church.

Aside from his own work, Smith taught some of the most well-known architects of the South in the early twentieth century, including Phillip Shutze, Preston Stevens, Flippen Burge, Ed Ivey and Lewis Crook, Jr. Philip Shutze’s work includes the Swan House and Glenn Memorial Church, Burge and Stevens designed the Capital City Country Club in Brookhaven, Ivey and Crooke designed Lullwater House at Emory University and First Baptist Church of Decatur. These are just examples of each of their extensive work.

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.

Convict leasing and chain gangs are part of the history of the Southeast, Georgia, and also Sandy Springs. Until 1933, there was a convict labor camp and rock quarry at the intersection of Roswell Road and Hammond Drive where Whole Foods is today. The camp and quarry extended across the area between Hammond Drive and Cliftwood Road on the west side of Roswell Road. The rock quarry included the land behind SunTrust Bank, where there is a sharp drop off going down towards Sandy Springs Circle.

John and Mary Donaldson Copeland owned the dairy in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Their home sat where Lidl and CVS are today in the triangle formed by Mount Vernon Road, Jett Ferry Road, and Dunwoody Club Drive. Dunwoody Club Drive was a dirt road known as Old Lawrenceville Road at that time.

Over on the other side of what is now Dunwoody Club Drive was the dairy operation. This is the location of the Orchard Park Shopping Center and Kroger today.

I’ve been in the area of North DeKalb Mall several times recently and decided to take a couple of photos of what was once Rich’s, the anchor store of the mall, and a place that I visited often from it’s beginnings through the 1990’s. These photos were taken in April of 2021.

By the Fall of 1917, soldiers were getting settled into their new life at Camp Gordon, a World War I encampment located where DeKalb-Peachtree Airport is today. They had left their families and friends and come to live and train at this camp, which just a few months earlier had not existed.