As Oxford Township developed in the mid-1800s, a cluster of farmsteads near its northern border became known as the Doty Settlement, named for a prominent local family. The community included a church and cemetery, a school, a blacksmith shop, a sawmill, a distillery, a furniture shop, and a fulling mill, so residents seldom needed to travel several miles to Oxford village for additional goods or services. Working together, they farmed local fields, bartered for other items, and men, women, and children labored long hours harvesting corn and wheat, reflecting the self-reliant skills needed to survive in the Ohio country. The Pioneer Farmstead was established by Joseph Morris in the mid-1830s, and tradition holds that he lived in a cave or root cellar while building his two-story brick home, along with a well, privy, smokehouse, and woodshed. He prospered by taking whiskey to Cincinnati and returning with groceries for the Oxford area, but the Panic of 1837 brought hard times and forced him to sell everything. In 1844 his brother-in-law Samuel Doty, a descendant of Mayflower passenger Edward Doty, bought the farm at a collector's sale; after Samuel's death in 1859, his brother Jesse became owner, and in the 1950s the farmstead was added to Hueston Woods State Park.