James Shackleford and his wife Martha "Patsy" Brodnax Shackleford, original Putnam County landowners in 1807, built this National Register house in 1818 on 23 acres then outside the city limits, on land purchased from Dr. Henry Branham on July 16, 1818. The Plain Style home with refined Federal interiors was advertised for sale in Milledgeville's Georgia Journal on Nov. 1, 1819, with 4 acres and as well calculated as a private seat. Shackleford gave the land for Old Union Church, built in 1819 and later razed in 1897, directly in front of the house facing south, and gave the land for Church Street to the public forever. He sold the property to Henley Varner on Dec. 9, 1819, and the Shacklefords and their 10 children moved to Perry and Greene, now Hale, counties in Alabama. Varner lost the property at sheriff's sale to Thomas Cooper, father of Mark Anthony Cooper and Emily Cooper, who married Joel Branham, who owned it by 1823. The Branhams sold it on Dec. 2, 1830, to Dr. John J. Boswell, who later moved to Columbus and back by 1857. Colonel William Ellis Adams owned it from 1856, and after the death of his second wife, Martha Russell Adams, his estate sold it on Mar. 31, 1883, to his daughter-in-law Martha D. Flournoy Adams. Adams and John Trippe were known as the Fathers of Eatonton Methodist Church and are ancestors of hundreds of Putnam families. Martha D. Flournoy Adams sold it in 1889 to Elizabeth Shy, who sold to Sam A. Rice in 1890, who sold to Sarah Ellen Hammond Adams, wife of Irby Hudson Adams, in 1894. Mrs. Ada Boone bought it from their son John L. Adams in 1919, and her estate sold it to Mr. and Mrs. W.D. Folds on Oct. 25, 1927. Their daughter, Dorothy E. Williams, sold it to James P. Marshall, Jr., on Oct. 19, 1978, and he completed the restoration in Dec. 1986.