It was built on land in a community west of Atlanta that was then called Adamsville which Wilson had inherited from his father William "Dollar Mill" Wilson (1775–1839) in 1839, and as the area around it developed came to be located in the Fairburn Heights neighborhood, a suburban area west of the Perimeter (I-285).

At the end, it was one of only a few remaining antebellum structures still standing in its original location within the Atlanta city limits.

The house was used during the Battle of Atlanta by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman as a temporary headquarters.

In that year it was added to the Atlanta Preservation Center's "Most Endangered Properties" list.

[3] The unannounced demolition of the house in December 2015 "came as a surprise" to the preservation community, who had hoped to stabilize the building until other plans could be made to save it.