Trail to Standing Peachtree and Houston Chapel

Trail to Standing Peachtree and Houston Chapel. . , This ancient trail led west to the Indian village of Standing Peachtree. It joined the Shallowford Trail near this spot linking it with trade routes to Stone Mountain. Later becoming a road it was among the first authorized when DeKalb County was formed out of Henry County following the 1821 Treaty of Indian Springs. On July 28, 1923 the newly formed Inferior Court of DeKalb County ordered that “new roads be cut out from Lot 246,” its chosen location for the county seat that would become the city of Decatur. The court appointed Naman Hardman (among others) to “view and designate the different routes…from Standing Peachtree to said lot.” Naman Hardman was an early settler in this part of DeKalb County who owned land between the two trails., The road was first called the Peachtree road, but in 1837 James Montgomery established a ferry crossing on the Chattahoochee River at Standing Peachtree. Subsequently this road became know as “the Montgomery Ferry road and then later, the North Decatur and Atlanta road.”, In 1905 with her own funds, Mrs. Amanda Powell Houston, Naman Hardman’s niece had erected beside this road a community chapel. Constructed of heart of pine lumber, it had an organ and seated sixty worshipers. Known as the Houston Chapel, it remained in service to the community until about 1917, at which time it was moved approximately 1,000 feet south of this marker and converted to a residence for Rev. Ernest Moore. Moore resided in the former chapel until his death in 1992.