Stephen Decatur Lawrence, the son of an original member of the Mercer colony, received about 640 acres of farmland on his twenty-first birthday and began building a small home on this site in 1874. In 1882 contractor Charley Florrer built a T-plan clapboard house with square nails about six feet east of the original structure, and in 1886 a kitchen room was added, changing it to a cruciform floor plan. Its central tower, steeply pitched overhanging roof, and prominent porches reflect Victorian features. Additional farmstead buildings included a barn built by Charley Florrer in 1887, along with a smokehouse, a brick-lined root cellar, and a wash house north of the main home. On this farmstead, Stephen D. Lawrence and his first wife, Louisa E. Porter, reared three surviving children, and after her death he and his second wife, Louisa Hill Walker, reared eight children here. The complex represents the evolution of domestic buildings on the North Texas Plains and Blackland Prairie from the 1870s to the late twentieth century, and members of the Lawrence family lived on the land until 1995, when 13.7 acres including the family complex became a city historical park in keeping with the wishes of one of Stephen and Louisa's daughters.