The location, within the boundaries of Monocacy National Battlefield, was the site of l'Hermitage Plantation, founded about 1793 by the Vincendière family.

The Park Service had acquired the area in 1993 as part of an expansion of the battlefield site, and conducted preliminary investigations in 2003.

Marguerite's husband, Etienne Bellumeau de la Vincendière, did not come to Maryland, choosing instead to establish himself in Charleston, South Carolina.

The plantation was notable for its size and ethnic character; more typical landholdings in the area were much smaller, with no more than a dozen slaves, and were owned by German immigrant farmers.

[6] The Vincendière family may have been trying to re-create the large-scale slave labor system that they were familiar with in Haiti, possibly in order to cultivate labor-intensive crops.

These charges were dismissed, but Payen e Boisneuf was found guilty in 1797 of beating a slave named Shadrack and of "not sufficiently clothing and feeding his negroes.