For nearly 60 years, this land was part of the Commonwealth Farm, home to a women's commune that began in Belton, Texas, in the late 1860s under the leadership of Martha McWhirter. In 1860s Texas, many women's lives were marked by subordinate status, grief, and isolation, and the Belton women found community through a prayer group and then through dreams they interpreted as divine instruction to leave their husbands and establish communal households together. There they followed beliefs in celibacy and spiritual sanctification and, for the first time, controlled their home lives, labor, and earnings. After establishing several successful businesses, they gradually overcame hostility to their unusual lifestyle, though the perception of their strangeness lingered, and membership peaked at 50 in 1880. In 1898, they used their accumulated wealth to retire to Washington, D.C., where they ran a boarding house and small farm while also pursuing arts, culture, and social causes including women's suffrage. As in Texas, the commune's financial success relied in part on the labor of people of color who lived and worked alongside the women but were not admitted as members. Membership gradually dwindled as the founders died and some younger women left. In 1903, the Commonwealth bought a 120-acre farm north of Colesville, acquiring wooded land, productive fields and orchards, and a c. 1875 farmhouse from carpenter Charles Collinsgru. The members tended livestock and produced butter, eggs, milk, fruit, and vegetables, expanded the farmhouse, and operated it as the Commonwealth Farm, an upscale country restaurant and retreat. Through the 1930s, the farm was a popular destination for Washington elites, where the women served their famous chicken dinners to wives of senators and diplomats and to others seeking escape from the city's summer heat. In 1946, only two members remained and most of the farmland was sold. Martha McWhirter Scheble, a second-generation Commonwealth member named in honor of Martha McWhirter, lived on the land until her death in 1983.