Dentist and Civil War veteran Samuel Hall Letson, born in 1833, moved with his wife Sarah and family to Norcross in the 1880s, where they owned property on North Peachtree Street not far from downtown, at a time before most of the homes that are there today were built.
At least three of the Letsons’ ten children lived in Norcross as well. Son L. H. (Herbert) Letson was born in 1870 and married Mamie Tapp in 1898. He worked for the Georgia Railway and Power Company for many years and served terms on the Norcross City Council and as Mayor in the early 20th century. Son Joseph Emmett Letson and his wife Georgia lived in Norcross and then later moved to Atlanta to live with their daughter Georgia and her family.
Two of their daughters, Sara and Alice, worked for the Fox Film Corporation in Atlanta during the silent film era, and Sara was evidently an adventurous young woman, planning a visit to Cuba in 1920.
Son Farmer Hinton Letson graduated from the Medical College of Georgia in 1902 and married Eva Johnson, the daughter of Norcross retail merchant A. A. Johnson. He practiced for many years in Grantville, in Coweta County, and later in Decatur. Dr. Letson died in 1925, and at that point Eva Letson moved with her seven children back to Norcross, buying the house at 49 West Peachtree Street, one block away from her parents.
Like many young men of his generation, Eva and Farmer Letson’s son Wiley Quillian (Quill) Letson entered the armed forces during World War II. He was killed in 1944 while stationed on a Navy ship supporting the D-Day invasion, one of five servicemen from Norcross who died during that conflict.
