John Allen Wakefield and his family was one of the first settlers to come to the newly created Kansas Territory.
Free soilers, they arrived in western Douglas County, Kansas, in July 1854, one month after the territory was opened to settlement.
It had six rooms and was 6 miles (9.7 km) west of the free-state stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas.
That spring southern partisans in the area began a picket of men assigned to watch the house.
At 2 A.M. on August 16 southern partisans, including Henry T. Titus, attacked the fortress home, but they were unable to take it.