For many years this was the home of William Silas "Bill" Manning and his family. Born into slavery in King George County about 1856, the son of Sampson and Winnie Hampton Manning, William was the pilot of a tugboat on the Rappahannock, a farmer, and a successful builder and landlord in Tappahannock. In the 1890s, he purchased this lot on Prince Street and constructed the two-story, Victorian style house where he and his second wife, Harriet Beale Manning, a dressmaker from Tappahannock, raised ten children. The property remained in the Manning family for three generations. In 1896, Manning also bought fourteen acres of land along Marsh Street and Croxton's Mill Road, now Airport Road, for a farm. One quarter acre of this tract was set aside for the Manning family cemetery on Marsh Street, adjacent to the west side of the First Baptist Church Cemetery, where Harriet, who died in 1922, and William S. Manning, who died in 1929, are buried. Manning Street in Tappahannock was once the lane that led to their farm.