English colonists built this spring house about 1683 after completing an ocean voyage that ended on the banks of the nearby Eastern Branch and establishing a residence close by in the late years of the 17th century. The spring house is among the oldest structural relics of the American Colonization Era. According to qualified judgement, the old oak tree was more than 125 years old when the spring house was built. The tree came to be known as the Lincoln Oak because of traditional conferences under its spreading limbs between President Lincoln and the commanding officers of the nearby fortifications, and it is held that on such an occasion the Civil War president drank the cooling waters that spring from among its roots.