Built around 1830 for Calvin Anderson, the Anderson House became a tavern when the National Road was completed through Madison County in 1837 and the village of Lafayette was platted by William Minter. Built by Stanley Watson, a Minter family son-in-law, it served travelers as traffic increased along the road, with 8 to 10 stagecoaches, drovers' herds, and other travelers passing through Lafayette daily, where four taverns operated. The Federal-style house, later given a Greek Revival-style porch, had four chimneys, eight fireplaces, a large dining room formed by opening two west-side rooms, east-side rooms used as a bar-room with a separate entrance, and a large unheated third-floor dormitory. The Red Brick Tavern, also built by Watson and operated by him, stood one quarter mile east and was built after the Anderson House. In 1848 the tavern was sold to R.G. and P.W. Morris, who sold it in 1850 to Valentine Wilson, and the 408-acre property was then operated for 40 years as Oak Grove Farm by Wilson's son Hamilton. The farm was illustrated in the 1875 atlas of Madison County. In 1895 John Thompson bought the property and, when he died in 1909, left it to his housekeeper Elizabeth Stone, who sold it that year to Herbert and Pearle Harper. They built a large barn for their registered Hereford cattle, and in 1925 Mrs. Harper began using the farmhouse as a tourist home called Terrace Lawn. In its nearly 200 years, the building has served as a tavern, a farmhouse, and a tourist house, and after the Harpers died, the farm, then consisting of 184 acres, was sold at public auction in 1976 to Kelso and Judith Wessel, who continued restoration and renovation of the house.