It is located on land first settled by Frederic Ravesies, in what was once the Vine and Olive Colony town of Arcola, founded by French immigrants in the early 19th century.

[3] The main house was built in 1856 as the center of a 3,000-acre (12 km2) forced-labor plantation owned by Alfred Parker Hatch.

Hatch, born on October 14, 1799, in Craven County, North Carolina, married Elizabeth Vail Blount on May 8, 1822.

Alfred Hatch established several large plantations, including Elm Ridge near Greensboro, and enslaved a total of 200 people to work them.

[3] Elizabeth Hatch died before the end of the Civil War and Alfred remarried to Victoria Jones Walker.