Ellwood once stood at the center of a five thousand-acre plantation, one of the largest in the region, with outbuildings including a kitchen, smokehouse, dairy, barns, and plain cabins for the enslaved people who lived there, making it more like a working village than a simple home. Before the Civil War, white residents likely made up no more than fifteen percent of Ellwood's population. For two centuries, the demands of the fields governed life there until war disrupted that rhythm. After the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, Ellwood became a hospital, and in 1864 it became the most prominent landmark on the Wilderness battlefield and a vast assembly area for Union troops. War transformed life there as the enslaved gained freedom, the owners adjusted to a new labor system and steadily sold off land, yet Ellwood remained a working farm in private ownership until the 1970s.