In 1876, George Washington Cornwell purchased land from brothers William Andrew and Jacob Simri Mauney to build this house in Kings Mountain at 106 King Street. The house originally had a center hall with a room on each side, front and rear doors, and porches at both the front and rear, while a kitchen and dining ell was added in the early part of the 20th century off the room on the left. George, who married Frances Loucinda Smith in 1875, had seven children with her, though only four lived to adulthood. Census records list George Washington Cornwell, his father James Madison Cornwell, and his half-brother William Cornwell as carriage or wagon makers. George belonged to the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in town, while Loucinda was a devout Baptist, and in 1890 she joined Margaret Isabelle Nevitt Kendrick and Callie Hoke Carpenter in organizing the First Baptist Church of Kings Mountain at the corner of East Mountain Street and South Piedmont Avenue. In 1910, the Cornwells sold the property to their eldest son Clarence on the condition that the house be moved to the far side of the property, where Clarence and his family relocated it and built a more fashionable 20th-century house. Central United Methodist Church later acquired the land and house from the Tignor Estate and, needing only the land, donated the structure to the Museum, which moved it to its current location on the Museum Commons in 2005.