McLendon Road, history behind the name

McLendon Road, running between East Ponce de Leon Road and Lawrenceville Highway, is on one of my regular routes. I’m often curious about road names and so I wondered about McLendon. It seemed likely it was the name of a family who once lived in the area.

In the DeKalb History Center archives, there is a 2012 oral history of the Roberts brothers (Sam, Grahame and Dan). Roberts Engineering Company was in the commercial air conditioning business. The brothers name several families from the Clarkston area, including McLendon.

“There’s another name that some of you people might remember. There was a gentleman out here who owned a great deal of property named Frank McLendon. He owned, I guess, I don’t know, thousands of acres of property out there.”  The property is described as going all the way to Scottdale.

McLendon Road meets up with Lawrenceville Highway in the Pea Ridge area. On the other side of Lawrenceville Highway, heading toward the railroad tracks and LaVista Road, the road is known as Frazier. Frazier is also a family name, but more on that later.

J. Frank’s father, James McLendon, was the first in the family to come to Clarkston. The family was active from the very beginning of Clarkston Methodist Church, which was first established in 1880. (DeKalb History Center archives, Clarkston Methodist Church)

The 1902 DeKalb Voters book for Clarkston, Georgia includes J. Frank McLendon age 22. His occupation is brickmaker. He married Alice Jolly, daughter of another Clarkston family. Her father, Hayes Jolly, is a 52-year-old merchant in 1902. (DeKalb History Center archives)

The March 14, 1918 Atlanta Journal announced Clem Jolly, a Clarkston merchant, was the new postmaster. The post office would be located at Jolly Store going forward.

The Roberts brothers share some memories of the Jolly family as well. “And there was a store out there, dry goods, grocery store, was run by a fellow named Tom Jolly.  And he had a brother named Clem Jolly. They lived right up on the main road in Clarkston.”

Census records from 1920 show J. Frank and Alice McLendon living with their 5 children. By 1940, only their child Nicholas, his wife, and their grandchild live with them.

J. Frank and Alice McLendon are buried at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. He died in 1955 and she died in 1966.

I discovered through a brief history written and available through DeKalb History Center that McLendon Elementary School was built on former farmland of the McLendon family. The school first opened in 1958.

Evergreen Forest is one of the early neighborhoods built on this land as times changed and old farms were sold and subdivided.