The Wilson Farm was a family homestead and agricultural property with roots stretching back to 1699, when the larger tract Beall's Pasture was granted by Charles Calvert, 3rd Lord Baltimore, to Ninian Beall. James Wilson purchased 305 acres of this land in 1750 and re-surveyed it in 1763 as Wilson's Part of Beall's Pasture Enlarged, and his son William Wilson later inherited it along with 130 acres of the adjoining tract Mount Arrarat. In 1823, William Wilson expanded the farm by 30 acres through purchases from Crauford's Adventure and Gordon's Pasture, bringing it to 483 acres. For several hundred years, the farm was a tobacco-growing plantation where enslaved African Americans labored during the nineteenth century, including members of the Allen, Banks, Woodward, and Jones families, and a surviving 1867 county slave statistics record names individuals associated with the farm. The Wilson family later diversified its operations in the 20th century, running the Wilson Brothers' Dairy and raising beef cattle, hogs, turkeys, and chickens, while also growing apples, pears, peaches, and pecans on trees planted by Joseph Percy Wilson and Georgianna Cornelia Wallis to mark the births of their children. The homestead that stood here was built in the early 1900s after an earlier family home burned, and it was the home of Joseph and Georgianna, grandparents of the last generation of the family to live on the farm; several of the trees they planted still survive near the homesite. Over time, land from the farm was donated for churches including the original St. Ambrose Catholic Church in 1886 and for construction of the Capital Beltway. Wilson family members served in the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War; British troops returning from Washington after burning the White House and the U.S. Capitol marched past the farm during the War of 1812, Union soldiers stopped there in the 1860s, and German prisoners of war worked on this and other nearby farms during World War II. By the end of the 20th century, it was one of the last large family-owned farms inside the Beltway, and the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission purchased it in 1995.