Stephen Green Dorsey came from a family that moved into what became Clayton County shortly after the Treaty of Indian Springs in 1821 opened the area for settlement, and after marrying Lucinda McConnell in 1841 he built a substantial family and estate. In the 1850s he acquired the William Crawford home site about a mile north of Lovejoy’s Station on the Macon & Western Railroad, a house locally associated with a stage line between McDonough and Fayetteville, and in 1858 he enlarged the original structure by attaching a neighboring house that had been rolled on logs to the site, creating an unusual example of upcountry plantation plain-style construction. In late July and August 1864, warfare repeatedly engulfed the plantation as U.S. cavalry raids aimed at the railroad reached the property: on July 29 McCook’s raiders moved on Lovejoy’s Station and Colonel James R. Brownlow established headquarters there, and on August 20 General Judson Kilpatrick’s men requisitioned supplies, pillaged the home and property, and fought Confederate cavalry along the McDonough road, with shot and shell striking the grounds and one artillery shell crashing through the house rafters while Mrs. Dorsey stayed inside protecting her two children who had measles. Thirteen days later the home again stood amid combat after the battle of Jonesborough, with Union and Confederate fortifications built on the property, tents, wagons, men, and horses covering the plantation, the crops ruined, and the place left desolate; many Union soldiers were buried there, and partitions from the house were removed to make coffins. Within five weeks, the Dorsey plantation was devastated.