Arthur Thome, an immigrant from Kentucky, built this house in 1853, and Joseph Benning acquired it in 1858. During the August 5, 1861 Battle of Athens, a cannonball fired by artillery of the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard struck the house, passing through the kitchen and out the opposite wall without harming anyone. J.M. Hiller, a local merchant and soldier in the Union Home Guard, remarked that the artillerymen had a fine chance at them, but because of the gunners' unskillfulness or some other cause, their cannons failed to kill or cripple a single man.