Dorcas Moulders Huff, Nettie Austin (principal) and Mrs. Chambers of Dunwoody School. Huff boarded in the Cheek Spruill House in the early 1930’s.
The historic home at the intersection of Chamblee Dunwoody Road and Mount Vernon Road is known as the Cheek/Spruill Farmhouse, however another family lived there between the Cheek and Spruill owners and that was the Church family.
Joberry Cheek built the home for his son Bunyan in 1906. Later Myra Cheek Martin lived in the home and she continued to live there when she married John W. Crook. She remained there until 1933.
In 1945, Carey and Florence Warnock Spruill bought the home. Carey Spruill died in 1983 and Florence Spruill lived there until she died in 1994. When Lynne Byrd nominated the home for the National Register for Historic Places in 1999 the name Cheek/Spruill House was given to the property. Many refer to the home as the Dunwoody Farmhouse.
That leaves a gap of 1933 to 1945. The owner during these years was William J. Church and his second wife Margaret Church. William J. Church moved his family into the Cheek/Spruill House in 1934.
William Church was born in Habersham County, Georgia in 1860. He met and married Mary Goddard in 1884 after moving to Anniston, Alabama. The couple had two daughters while living in Alabama and two more daughters after returning to Atlanta in 1890.
Church operated a store in Kirkwood on Crescent Avenue in Atlanta. Later, he purchased land at the corner of West Peachtree and Fourteenth Street to start the Brookwood Grocery Company. He ran that store until 1920, when he started leasing Hawk’s Drug Store.
Mary Goddard Church died in 1904. She was originally buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Atlanta, but Church later had her moved to Prospect Methodist Church in Chamblee. This is where he is buried as well.
Church married Margaret Price in 1905 and they had one son who died at a young age.
After many years as a store owner and manager, Church wanted to find a country home. One of the requirements was that it was close to a church. He was happy to find the former Cheek home in Dunwoody located near Dunwoody Methodist Church. He stayed active at the church until his death in 1940. Margaret died in 1943, after which the house and property were sold to Carey and Florence Spruill.
In 1998, J. Edwin Dilbeck, great grandson of William Joseph Church, shared his childhood memories of visiting the home with Lynne Byrd. He remembered enjoying the scuppernongs and grapes growing on an arbor in the back yard. He also loved looking at his great grandfather’s model T Ford that he kept in the barn. William Church never bought a newer car.
Dilbeck said the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of the family called Margaret “Big Mama”. One story about “Big Mama” occurred during the rationing of World War II. She went to the DeKalb County Courthouse to get more sugar coupons because she was going to put up some jelly. She omitted her age on the paperwork. When asked by an officer what was her age she replied “Young man, that is none of your business. You may keep your sugar.”
Dilbeck told Lynne Byrd, “I am glad that my five grandchildren will be able to see the last home their great-great-great grandfather owned and where he lived.”
One other known (but never mentioned) resident of Cheek/Spruill House was Dorcas Moulders, a teacher at Dunwoody School in 1931, 1932, and 1933. She was a boarder in the home, during the last few years that Myra Cheek Crook lived there.
Dorcas Moulders Huff and Edwin Dilbeck returned to the Cheek Spruill House in 1998.