- Tavern
- Early
- December 18, 1838
- City of Atlanta
- Location approximate
Irby's tavern and the 'buck head' (1838)
On December 18, 1838, Henry Irby bought 202.5 acres (Land Lot 99 of the 17th District) at the junction of today's Peachtree, Roswell and West Paces Ferry roads for $650 and opened a tavern and store. The settlement, first called Irbyville, took the name Buckhead from a deer's head displayed there.
The record
Rough Draft Atlanta (2009) says Irby bought Land Lot 99 from Daniel Johnson on that date for $650; Wikipedia gives the same terms, citing Buckhead.com, and puts the store and tavern at the northwest corner of the intersection. An 1840 act of the legislature already referred to 'the house of Henry Irby, at the place known as Buckhead.' Accounts of the buck differ: Franklin Garrett wrote that someone, possibly Irby, shot it around 1840 at a spring just south of Paces Ferry Road; Irby's granddaughter said the head was nailed to a tree at a big spring about two blocks down Paces Ferry Road; a 1967 newspaper story credited John Whitley, a North Carolinian living nearby; and the Atlanta 100 says the head hung on the tavern wall. The Atlanta 100 notes the early name Irbyville. The road to Pace's Ferry ran from Decatur through Buckhead to the Chattahoochee by the 1830s; in 1834 the DeKalb Inferior Court ordered a bridge over Nancy Creek 'on the road to Pace's Ferry' (GHS).
Today: The Buckhead Village junction of Peachtree Rd, Roswell Rd and West Paces Ferry Rd.