- House
- Early
- bought 1822; settled 1823; house burned 1910
- City of Atlanta
- Location approximate
Richard and Martha Todd homestead (1823)
Richard Copeland Todd bought Land Lot 17 of the 14th District in 1822 and settled there with his wife Martha in 1823, ten years before Hardy Ivy settled downtown. The Atlanta History Center calls him the first white settler in the Virginia-Highland area.
The record
William Zachry, who claimed the 202.5-acre lot in the 1821 land lottery, sold it in 1822 for $100 to Todd, a farmer from Chester, South Carolina (Atlanta History Center; the Virginia-Highland Civic Association dates the sale to February 1822). The Todds farmed, raised five children and were buried in a family cemetery a short distance behind the house, on today's Ponce de Leon Terrace; a log-shaped granite monument marked the graves until it was destroyed in 2015. Richard died in the early 1850s (sources give 1851 or 1852) and Martha in 1896. Their house, at today's 816 Greenwood Avenue near Ponce de Leon Place and Bonaventure Avenue, stood for nearly a century before burning on October 31, 1910. Todd Road, which cuts diagonally across the Virginia-Highland street grid, began as a wagon trail from the Todd farm to the homestead of Hardy Ivy, who was married to Richard's older sister Sarah.
Today: Virginia-Highland houses; Todd Rd NE keeps the old diagonal.
Where on the map: Todd Road: Todd Rd NE in Virginia-Highland (about 33.779-33.782 N, 84.355-84.357 W), a short diagonal surviving from the wagon road toward Hardy Ivy's land.