William Stirling, an early and prominent settler of Leeds, was a farmer, winemaker, and chief executive officer of the Leeds Water Company. In 1872, while riding through Silver Reef on a cold winter day, he saw that the Christy Mill, a five-stamp silver ore processing mill, was overheating because its routine water supply had frozen solid and an explosion was inevitable. He quickly opened head gates that directed water from the Leeds ditch system to cool the mill and avert disaster. In gratitude, the mill's owners placed him on the payroll with a handsome salary for a year without expecting him to work, and he used that wage to build the two-story brick home in 1876. Samuel Worthen and Sons built the house at a cost of about $5,000, and it exemplifies the "Dixie Dormer" upper floor windows that were a popular architectural design of the day. William Stirling later played an important role in the history of early Leeds and the brief life of Silver Reef from 1875 to 1889. After the silver boom declined, he recognized that many empty wooden buildings in Silver Reef could still be reused, and in 1895 he purchased and moved the vacant St. John's Catholic Church to Leeds, converting it into the Leeds Social Hall, or Old Stirling Hall, where plays, variety shows, dances, and other festive activities drew people from a wide area. His grandson Eldon Stirling lived in the home during the latter part of the twentieth century and, in the early 1980s, updated the porch and balcony woodwork by hand turning all the railing balusters on a lathe.