Dr. James Peters built his family’s homestead here as a very early version of a two-room frame house with two doors and two chimneys. Its outbuildings included a barn, well, privy, and summer kitchen, and the original rooms had 10-inch-wide hand-planed boards on the walls and ceilings and 6-inch-wide pine plank flooring secured with cut or hand-wrought nails. Significant Civil War military events took place at the house and in the immediate vicinity in 1864, and General Oliver O. Howard, commander of the 4th Army Corps (Federal), used the house as his headquarters from June 6-10, 1864. Soon after the Federal departure, an attempt was made to burn the house, but the timely arrival of a neighbor saved it from destruction.