Richard Peters (1810-1889) was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, now part of Philadelphia. After serving an apprenticeship with architect William Strickland, Richard was offered a position by John Edgar Thomson on the Georgia Railroad as an assistant engineer in 1835. He first visited Atlanta (then called Marthasville) in 1844 and moved there permanently in 1846. In Atlanta, Peters was involved in railroad construction and management and real estate investment. Richard Peters married Mary Jane Thompson in 1848 and purchased 405 acres in what later became Midtown, Atlanta. He was an avid livestock breeder and horticulturalist and established a nursery in Atlanta in 1854. In 1871, he founded the Atlanta Street Railway Company, with George Adair, which built the first street railway in Atlanta. After the Kimball House was destroyed by fire, Peters lead the efforts to rebuild it and at the same time, began to subdivide his north Atlanta land. In 1887, he donated four acres of land to help found Georgia Institute of Technology. Upon his death in 1889, his son Edward C. Peters became trustee of the Peters estate. Edward was a civic and business leader, and in 1890 he formed the Peters Land Company. He is primarily associated with the proposed development of Peters Park. After Edward's death in 1937, the family home passed to his son Wimberly, and then to Wimberly's wife, Lucile, who lived in the house until her death in 1970.