- House
- Early
- 1833
- City of Atlanta
- Location approximate
Hardy Ivy's cabin (1833)
Around 1833 Hardy Ivy of South Carolina settled on Land Lot 51 of the 14th District and built a double log cabin. He and his wife Sarah Todd Ivy are generally considered the first permanent white settlers of what became downtown Atlanta.
The record
Wikipedia says Ivy came from the Abbeville district and paid $225 for the 202.5-acre lot in 1833; this research found no other source for the price. Wikipedia places the cabin near today's Courtland and Ellis streets, where the Marriott Marquis now stands, and describes the lot as running from Edgewood Avenue north to just south of Ralph McGill Boulevard, between Peachtree and old Fort Street; the city's land-lot map puts that site in Land Lot 51. Ivy was killed after being thrown from his horse in the early 1840s (Wikipedia says the winter of 1841-42; the Virginia-Highland Civic Association gives 1843). He is often called Atlanta's first settler, but his wife's brother Richard Todd had settled a few miles northeast in 1823. Ivy Street, later renamed Peachtree Center Avenue, was named for him, and Hardy Ivy Park, at the fork of Peachtree and West Peachtree streets, commemorates him.
Today: Downtown hotels and offices; Hardy Ivy Park is a few blocks northwest.