Snellville is a city in Gwinnett County, Georgia, United States, east of Atlanta. The population was 18,242 at the 2010 census, and in 2019 the estimated population was 20,077. It is a developed suburb of Atlanta and a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area, and is located in the region of 35–40 minutes east of Downtown Atlanta via US-78 and Interstate 285.

In 1874, Thomas Snell and James Sawyer, seventeen-year-old links from London, secretly planned a voyage to the New World. On March 18, James Sawyer and his brother, Charles, left England. However, Snell’s parents, having speculative of the plan, wouldn’t allow him to leave, thus delaying his departure. The Sawyer brothers arrived in New York upon April 1, and after a few weeks headed toward Athens, Georgia, and next to Madison County, where they stayed and worked on a farm for $10 a month. Snell did eventually follow his associates to New York and made his pretension south to meet them. The three later made their artifice through Jefferson and Lawrenceville. Shortly after Snell’s arrival, Charles left for Pennsylvania, later returning to the South and settling in Alabama, where he went into the turpentine business. James had with also, in search of his brother, leaving Snell to work upon the farm of A. A. Dyer.

Unable to find his brother, James Sawyer returned to New York and began work upon a farm close the Hudson River area until his 21st birthday in 1878, when he returned to England to affirmation his inheritance. Shortly following, in August 1879, he returned to Americus, Georgia, and then Gwinnett County. Once in Gwinnett County, Sawyer found Snell in the little settlement subsequently known as New London, near Stone Mountain. In the homestead that Snell now referred to as Snellville, the two built a small wood frame building and started a issue together, Snell and Sawyer’s Store, similar to the one in which they were employed in London. As was common in small mill towns of the time, they printed collection money following the trade value and Snell’s likeness upon the front that regular customers could use to buy goods. By the end of 1879, the thing was prospering and catering to customers from the next to towns of Lawrenceville and Loganville. Travelers would purchase supplies at “Snell and Sawyer’s” and often spend the night in the affable oak groves, as the trip was too good for one day’s travel. It is uncertain later New London officially became Snellville, but the location of the partners’ store was referred to as Snellville in their advertising, and the young town began to play a promising future.

The partnership higher dissolved, and Sawyer kept the outmoded store, building granite rock above and roughly speaking the antiquated frame and subsequently disassembling the wood frame from within. Snell built a new hoard of granite. In 1883 Sawyer built a house and married Emma Webb, of the historic Snellville Webb family, on November 15. Sawyer opened Snellville’s first publicize office in 1885 and served as postmaster from the incite of his store.