William R. Wallace and his two brothers came to DeKalb County not long after the Civil War.  They were all Confederate veterans and they all built mills in the county.  Wallace bought his land along what is now Chamblee Dunwoody Road, along Nancy Creek and including where Chamblee United Methodist Church, The Preserve at Fischer Mansion and D’Youville Condimiums are located today.

William Wallace owned eleven hundred acres on which he built a home, sawmill, and furniture shop.  He sold his furniture in Atlanta, but also in Alpharetta, Canton, Gainesville, and Cumming.  When the Cotton States and International Exposition took place in Atlanta in 1895, he supplied one thousand tables for the event.  He continued to operate his sawmill and shop until his death in 1909.  Wallace is buried at the Prospect Methodist Church cemetery in Chamblee. 

One of his daughters, Ida Wallace Carroll, was interviewed by the Atlanta Constitution on her one hundredth birthday in 1982.  She had attended the 1895 Cotton Exposition where her father’s tables were on display as a small child.  She recalled the Roswell Railroad passing along where the Wallace home was located on Chamblee Dunwoody Road, then called Roswell Road.  Mrs. Carroll even remembered the October day in 1905 when President Theodore Roosevelt passed by their home on the train to Roswell.  In Roswell, he visited his wife’s childhood home, Bulloch Hall. (Atlanta Constitution, Chamblee’s Ida Wallace Carroll Celebrates 100th Birthday, December 20, 1982)

The mills of William Wallace’s brothers were located on Peavine Creek along the Seaboard Railroad near Emory University and the other was on the DeKalb-Gwinnett line near Stone Mountain.

There was also a school on William Wallace’s property in the late 1800’s, located near where the entrance to Gainesborough subdivision is today.  The school was of course known as Wallace School.  In The Story of Dunwoody, by Ethel Spruill and Elizabeth Davis, Charlie Marchman recalls attending the Wallace School.  He remembers his teacher was Claudia Cowan.  Later, he alternated between Chamblee School and Dunwoody School as his home was between the two schools. 

The property of William Wallace would later be bought by Dr. Luther Fischer.  He built a beautiful home and magnificent gardens known as Flowerland.  The gardens were a big attraction, with people driving from all around Atlanta to enjoy them.  That’s another story for another day.