Thanks to a 1994 oral history recorded by Dunwoody Preservation Trust, the history and memories of Horace DeLong are preserved. In this article I have shared his recollections.
The DeLong family once owned one hundred fifty-five acres in the Dunwoody community along what is now Spalding Drive. Today this land is part of Sandy Springs in Fulton County, but when the DeLongs lived there it was part of Milton County.
The DeLong property encompassed land on both sides of Spalding Drive, including where Temple Emanu-EL and the Four Seasons neighborhood are today. Mr. DeLong was born in 1906 in a house close to the Chattahoochee River behind what is now Hewlett Road. Later the family moved to a house that sat about where the Four Seasons subdivision sign is today.
There were ten boys and two girls in the DeLong family; Horace and his twin brother Doris were the youngest. The family grew cotton by the river and on particularly hot days the children would cool off in the river when the work was done. “My back still hurts from picking cotton as a kid,” Mr. DeLong lamented.
Horace DeLong also picked cotton for Adam Jett, who lived on the other side of the river and operated a ferry. The Jett Ferry was located near where Ball Mill Creek meets the Chattahoochee River. Mr. DeLong remembers Adam Jett as having a “long beard down to his waist.” Spalding Drive at that time was known as Jett Ferry Road and it followed a path closer to the river.
When asked what kind of toys he had growing up, Mr. DeLong answered, “That’s easy. We didn’t. We’d make ‘em.” He explained that if they wanted a toy, they made it out of wood. They would carve wheels and an axle from the wood of a black gum tree to make a toy wagon.
Christmas meant an apple or orange in the children’s stocking and the Fourth of July meant picking blackberries. Mr. DeLong’s mother canned blackberries, made blackberry jelly and of course baked blackberry pie.
Mr. DeLong attended the Ebenezer School that was located near the Ebenezer Primitive Baptist Church. It was a small wood schoolhouse and Annie Drake and Daisy Copeland were two teachers he had over the years. Many years later the school caught fire and Horace DeLong watched it burn to the ground.
Students gathered in front of Ebenezer School, which was located on the same property as Ebenezer Primitive Baptist Church. Horace DeLong remembered the day the school burned to the ground.
The DeLongs were some of the early members of Ebenezer Primitive Baptist Church. Horace DeLong and his family participated in traditional Sacred Harp singing at Ebenezer, where the human voice is the instrument. No accompanying instruments are used. The children and grandchildren of Horace and his wife Gertrude have continued this tradition.
When asked if he ever went to Sandy Springs as a child growing up here, he remembered going to camp meeting at the Sandy Springs Methodist Church. They would walk six miles to get there, sometimes stopping along the way to buy a watermelon, cut it open and eat it on the side of the road.
He went to Roswell if he wanted to see a “picture show.” They began showing silent movies on the top floor of the Roswell Store in 1922, when Horace DeLong was sixteen years old. A cowboy western movie was shown most Saturday nights, at a cost of ten cents for children and twenty five cents for adults.
Other sources cited include: Roswell: A Pictorial History, edited by Darlene M. Walsh