Samuel Shively purchased this property from the federal government on June 11, 1835, and within two years Robert W. Chapman, a pioneer land speculator, acquired it and built the original house, a modest two-story rectangular structure about 16 by 20 feet in size. After Chapman suffered financial troubles and lost the property to foreclosure in the early 1840s, John S. Hatch, who had arrived from New York state in 1839, and Sabrina Norton, who settled at Plainfield Township that same year, married in 1840 and bought the house and farm in 1842. As the Hatch family grew and prospered, including the birth of John Norton Hatch in 1849, they enlarged the home by 1850 with a nearly square two-story addition measuring 30 by 28 feet at the northeast corner, established a substantial barn and large orchard, and made the residence a familiar sight to travelers along the Lockport, Plainfield, and Yorkville Plant Road. After the deaths of John S. Hatch in 1869, John N. Hatch in 1875, and Sabina Hatch in 1880, the house passed to niece Clara Norton, who married widower John Platt a year later and moved into the former Hatch residence with his two children. Around 1902, a one-and-a-half-story kitchen wing was added at the southwest corner, and the house remained the Platt home until John and Clara Platt both died in 1913. Their son Jesse King Platt lived there until his sudden death in 1925, after which the property was sold to the Chicago Gravel Company, rented by a succession of tenants through the late 1970s, modernized with electricity and indoor plumbing, then abandoned and left to fall into disrepair by the late 1980s. The Forest Preserve District of Will County purchased the property in 1999, and although efforts between 2001 and 2003 sought to preserve part of the historic house, decades of neglect led to its demolition in late 2003, with its foundations preserved as a reminder of the residence.