During the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, a million people fled their homeland, and most came to America. Among them was 22 year old John Donley of Ballyporeen, County Tipperary, who landed in New York City in 1848. He leased and later bought a farm on 29 Mile Road, then called Irish Road, just east of Gratiot Turnpike. John and two of his brothers cleared the land and built a log cabin there. Four generations of the Donley family lived in the cabin and on the farm for more than 100 years. During the 1930s and '40s, John Donley's grandson Hugh Donley, his wife Frances Gavin, and their seven children occupied the cabin. In 1998, the Richmond Historical Society moved the cabin to this site to preserve it for future generations.