Morgan Falls School of Sandy Springs

New local history posts Monday.

The first Morgan Falls school sat along Roswell road along what is now Morgan Falls Road, on the west side of Roswell Road. Later another school was built across the road just north of where the Fulton County North Service Center is located. A third school was built on the land where the service center is today.

The first record of Morgan Falls School is January 1907, when the Atlanta Constitution reported Morgan Falls as one of two new schools opening in Fulton County. The other was on Stewart Avenue. The article also states, “The county was aided in the construction of the Morgan Falls school by the company of that name with its secretary and treasurer, Forrest Adair, very instrumental in the work.”

The date of the school coincides with the beginnings of Morgan Falls Dam, constructed to help supply electricity to the area. There were homes and workers with families in the area and those families needed a school.

S. Morgan Smith initially located the site on the Chattahoochee River as suitable for a hydroeclectric Power Company in 1897. He started the Atlanta Water and Electric Power Company.

At the same time, the Georgia Railway and Electric Company was having trouble meeting the power demands of the growing city of Atlanta. Smith contracted to provide power from Morgan Falls.

Preston Arkwright needed power for the Atlanta electric streetcars he owned and purchased Atlanta Water and Electric Power Company in 1911. He combined that company with Georgia Railway and Electric Company which eventually became Georgia Power Company.

Morgan Falls Road was previously known as Bull Sluice Road, leading to the Bull Sluice Shoals along the Chattahoochee River. The Bull Sluice spur of the Roswell Railroad brought supplies to the site for construction of the dam. 

In 1932, Atlanta attorney and chairman of the state board of regents Hughes Spalding donated land on the east side of Roswell Road for the second Morgan Falls School to be built.

Richard Adams, born in 1933 along what is now Dunwoody Club Drive, attended this second version of Morgan Falls School. He remembers James Pitts drove the school bus. Pitts Road is named for the Pitts family. 

Many students who attended Morgan Falls School through the years were from families where the father worked at Morgan Falls Electric Plant. In 1939, Ann Sitton and Lucile Johnson participated in a flag day celebration at the school. Their families lived on Bull Sluice Road (the name had not changed at the point) and their fathers worked at the nearby electric plant. (Atlanta Constitution, June 20, 1939)

According to the 1940 census, twelve families lived on Bull Sluice Road or nearby on Roswell Road with a family member who worked at Morgan Falls. 

The principal of the school during these years was Lucile Wing Hockenhull. She devoted twenty-seven years as teacher and principal at the school. Her parents were George Washington Wing and Eliza Wing.  The Wing family purchased the Holly Hill home in Roswell around 1895. Lucille lived to be 102 according to her obituary in the Atlanta Constitution on March 28, 1996.   

The third Morgan Falls School was a two-story building constructed around 1952. The school burned down in January of 1971.  In 1973, Fulton County commissioners asked the county school board to donate the 4.5 acres for a “new satellite courthouse” in North Fulton. (Atlanta Constitution, May 31, 1973)

For more local history stories, select a subject below or use the search box.