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Peeler Road in Dunwoody is named for the family who once lived along the road.  The Peelers first became interested in the Chamblee Dunwoody Road area when some of their family, Uncle Joe and Aunt Mabel Powell, began working for Dr. Luther Fischer. 

Dr. Fischer was a physician and co-founder of Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta.  He and his wife built a Phillip Schutze designed mansion which still stands as part of the Preserve at Fischer Mansion development, on Chamblee Dunwoody Road inside I-285. During the Fischer ownership, the home and gardens were known as Flowerland and Atlantans drove to Chamblee Dunwoody Road to see the beautiful gardens.

The Peelers decided to purchase their own land nearby and the opportunity presented itself when an auction was held to sell land owned by the Donaldson family around 1930.  The Donaldson property extended from where the Donaldson Bannister Home sits at Vermack Road and Chamblee Dunwoody Road towards where I-285 is today.  The Peelers purchased twenty acres of land and in 1932 they moved to Dunwoody. 

The 1940 census shows that they lived on a road with a new name-Peeler Road. They had a handful of neighbors on the road extending all the way down to where Peeler Road meets Winters Chapel Road. Their neighbors are the Warbingtons, Adams, Gardners, and the Glaze family.

Clarence L. Peeler, Sr. worked for the Seaboard Air Line Railway and Julia Brown Peeler was with the County Commissioners of Georgia.  Clarence, Jr. was about thirteen years old when they moved to Dunwoody and he began attending Chamblee High School, the only high school in north DeKalb at that time.

Clarence Peeler, Jr. graduated from Chamblee High School in 1935. In an oral history recorded in 1988 and in the archives of the DeKalb History Center, Peeler describes how there was a question of whether he would enter eighth or ninth grade when he started at Chamblee High School. The question had to do with the fact that he not yet taken any algebra. He ended up starting in the ninth grade. He credited Prof M. E. Smith (a name I have heard from many other Chamblee alumni) with helping him succeed and not fall behind. According to Peeler, Prof Smith was, “was one of the finest men that I knew.”

Peeler also tells how one of the grandchildren of William J. and Martha Adams Donaldson came to live with the Peelers soon after they moved to Dunwoody. Etheridge Keith was the son of Amanda Donaldson and George Keith. His parents had both died before 1932. After the Donaldson estate was auctioned off he came to live with the Peelers and finish school at Chamblee High School.

After high school, Peeler attended The Citadel and graduated in 1939. Initially, he was not given a commission because he was underweight.  They suggested he try to get up to a weight of 127 pounds. In the meantime, he began attending Emory Law School until World War II began and then he was called to duty.  He served as a Captain in Normandy, Northern France and Rhineland.  He was with General Patton at the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded the Bronze Star for “heroism in ground combat.”

Following World War II, Clarence Peeler, Jr. wanted to finish law school but he also wanted to see if he could go ahead and pass the bar. So he took the crash course of Julius McCurdy of McCurdy and Candler to help him pass the bar, which he did. Then he finished law school and began practicing law.  His first job was checking titles for Julius McCurdy. In 1964, he became Superior Court Judge in DeKalb County. 

Judge Peeler remembered fondly the people in the community he moved to at the age of 13, including members of the Donaldson, Marchman, Head, Bullard, Spruill and Grant families.

He also remembered that when traveling the path from downtown Decatur to where the arch of WWI Camp Gordon was located, at Dresden Drive and Clairmont Road, the road was dirt the entire way once you crossed North Decatur Road.

The path of Peeler Road back then was more continuous, unlike today’s Peeler Road that ends at North Peachtree and picks up again at Tilly Mill Road.  The name was given before Clarence Jr. went to war or became a judge in DeKalb County.  The road became Peeler Road simply because the Peeler family lived there and because Clarence Peeler, Sr. was always asking Charlie Matthews to scrape and rock the road after a big rain. Peeler describes Scott Candler as the successor to Charlie Matthews.  

Read all of the transcribed oral history of Clarence Peeler, Jr. at DeKalb History Center.