If you were expecting an important letter, Sentell Spruill was the kind of postmaster who would deliver it to you on a Sunday. He worked in the post office when it was in Thompson’s Grocery and when it was located behind the small country grocery store. Thompson’s Grocery was on the southwest corner of the Mount Vernon Road and Chamblee Dunwoody Road intersection in Dunwoody where BP is today.
Thompson’s Grocery at the southwest corner of Chamblee Dunwoody Road and Mount Vernon Road, where Sentell Spruill worked as postmaster of Dunwoody, Georgia.
Cephas Sentell Spruill was born in 1909 in Dunwoody to James Cephas Spruill and Alice Abernathy Spruill. He married Emma Moore of Henry County, Georgia. After World War II broke out, Spruill served as a Marine from 1944 until the end of the war. In 1949, he became postmaster of Dunwoody and remained in that job until 1968.
People who knew Sentell Spruill often called him by the name Pappy. In addition to managing the post office, he had a blacksmith shop at his home. Sentell and Emma Spruill’s farmhouse was on the property that is now home to Dunwoody Baptist Church. It had a tin roof, a swept dirt yard and a front porch which served as a gathering place for neighbors.
When the couple sold their property to Dunwoody Baptist Church in the 1960s, they moved into the old church parsonage located where Publix is today on Chamblee Dunwoody Road. Before Dunwoody Baptist Church was established on Ashford Dunwoody Road, the Baptists in the community met at First Baptist Church on Chamblee Dunwoody Road where Chase Bank is today.
Sentell Spruill’s father, James C. Spruill, was also a blacksmith, according to the DeKalb County voters’ book of 1902. (DeKalb History Center archives)
As is often the case, Sentell Spruill is not only part of the pioneer Spruill family, but he has ties to other early families. He is the great grandson of Peter Ball, who operated a mill along what is known as Ball Mill Creek and Ball Mill Road. Spruill is also the great, great grandson of Salathiel Adams. Adams was an early settler in Cross Keys and is buried in the Salathiel and Sarah Adams historic cemetery on Oconee Pass in Brookhaven.
Sentell Spruill lived his later years in Cleveland, Georgia, but when he died in 1992 his funeral was at Dunwoody Methodist Church, and he is buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Roswell alongside Emma Spruill.