The Ben Lomond Manor House was built in 1837 by Benjamin Tasker Chinn as the principal structure on 1,739 acres. Prosperous farmers before the war, the Chinn family saw their fortunes decline because the estate stood near the sites of the First and Second Battles of Manassas. As the Civil War fighting moved closer, they fled and left the house vacant for several years. Markings on the walls show that Union soldiers occupied the empty building for a time in the spring of 1862, and some evidence suggests it was used as a hospital or at least as an overnight refuge for soldiers traveling north to Washington, D.C. Many of the soldiers' names and other interior wall markings are barely legible, and historians have tried to match the scrawled names with soldiers known to have been in the area in 1862. The Chinn family never recovered from the war, and on April 21, 1870, they traded the estate to William H. Campbell for land of equal value ($20,000) in Washington, D.C. Campbell, a Scotsman, is believed to have named the estate Ben Lomond.
