What is today known as the Shafer Farm was part of a 298-parcel tract called "The Forest of Needwood" in the late 18th century. John Garrott III built the house in the early 1830s, and along with several generations of the Garrott family, more than a dozen enslaved African Americans lived and worked there in the home and fields. By the 1850s, the Garrotts rented the property to Martin Shafer, who lived in the house and operated the farmstead. During the Civil War, the farm served as Union General William B. Franklin's headquarters, and soon after setting camp he ordered his troops west to defend South Mountain. After the Civil War, the Shafers remained on the property and operated a wagon shop and blacksmith shop along Gapland Road leading into Burkittsville. They purchased the parcel in 1889, four decades after moving onto the land. The Schafer family owned the property until 2016, when it was given to the Burkittsville Preservation Association, Inc. Today the farm includes the original home, a detached kitchen-workshop, smokehouse, well, shed, and barn. Archaeologists with the Maryland Department of Transportation surveyed the farm and found artifacts reflecting 19th-century farm life and Union troop occupation, including Minie balls, a harness buckle, and horseshoes.