The Arlington Historical Society, which owns the building, estimates that the one room log cabin was built in the 1740s.

[3] In the mid-18th century, yeoman farmer John Ball built a one-room log cabin with a loft in what is now Arlington, Virginia.

The third generation, brother and sister Andrew and Anne, ran a dairy farm and built the 1885 addition that adjoins the original Ball cabin.

When the Carlins sold the property in 1887, the land was subdivided into a community known today as Glencarlyn, the oldest subdivision in Arlington.

The last owner, Marian Rhinehart Sellers, gave the house to the Arlington Historical Society in 1975 so that it would be preserved and open to the public.