Dunwoody Post Office history

This article is about the different locations in Dunwoody that have held the post office. Be sure and also check out these PDFs of the Spring 2025 and Summer 2025 Georgia Postal History Society newsletter. The research of Michael Wing has produced a thorough history of the Dunwoody, Georgia post office. Some of the details were discovered by searching through old Dunwoody post office records held in the archives of Dunwoody Preservation Trust.

According to The Story of Dunwoody, written by Ethel Spruill and Elizabeth Davis in 1975, there have been seven different post office locations in Dunwoody.  Much of the post office history they gathered came from Sentell Spruill, retired Dunwoody postmaster. 

George Flowers applied for a post office in 1881, suggesting the name of Dunwoody.  The first postmaster on record is Silas Beavers in 1883.  The U. S. Appointment of Postmaster records are available on ancestry.com.

The first location of the post office was in the triangle where Chamblee Dunwoody Road and Roberts Drive fork, on the property of Dr. Warren Duke.  The second location was in the store of P. L. Moss, located along the triangle that is now Nandina Lane.  Moss was postmaster from 1893 until 1906.

The next post office was on the property of the Cheek family.  This post office was accessible by a dirt road behind the Dunwoody Depot.  The depot was located on property that is today between the Chevron station and CVS on Chamblee Dunwoody Road.

In the year 1906, there were three different postmasters, beginning with William J. Cheek.  Cheek and William R. Nash operated a store.  It was in this same year that a man named James Clark went on a shooting rampage through three counties and ended up in the store of Cheek and Nash, asking for ammunition.  He shot and killed Cheek and then shot at Nash.  Nash was saved when the bullet struck his masonic medal.  He took over as postmaster when Cheek died.  (Atlanta Constitution, May 16, 1906, James Clark Runs Amuck) 

Later that year, Columbia Cheek became postmistress and remained in the position until 1920 when Dillard Blackwell took over.  During the years Columbia Cheek was postmistress and continuing into the 1920’s, Tolleson Kirby delivered the mail first by horse and buggy and later in his Model T Ford.  His route extended from Dunwoody to Morgan Falls, to Chastain Park and back.  

Once the Roswell Railroad was no longer in use in 1921, the Dunwoody Depot became home to the post office.  Later the depot was moved up Chamblee Dunwoody Road to the corner of Chamblee Dunwoody Road and Mount Vernon Road.  The post office was on the left side of the building and a country store occupied the right.  W. R. Nash owned the store and was postmaster from 1929 until 1949.

The store changed ownership and became Thompsons’s and the postmaster was Sentell Spruill from 1949 until 1969.  In 1964, the post office moved to a small brick building on Chamblee Dunwoody Road, across the road from Dunwoody Elementary (now Spruill Center for the Arts and Dunwoody Library) and behind what became an Amoco Gas Station (today BP).  This same building was later home to an air conditioning business and karate studio. 

June Dempsey Eidson, who died earlier this year, worked for the post office for eighteen years.  She worked in the post office in the old train depot converted post office and later in the 1964 brick building. 

In 1972, the post office at Dunwoody Village opened.  The previous post office remained open in the beginning, with business and post office box service in the new building and carrier delivery service in the old building. 

A few years ago, the family of Sentell Spruill donated post office logs and other records to Dunwoody Preservation Trust.  These records are part of the archives held by DPT.