The farm is 216 acres of gardens, pastures, meadows, woodlands and salt marsh and it features the Paine (or Paine-Dodge) House, a First Period farmhouse constructed in 1694.

[2] Prior to its settlement by European colonists, the land was a homeland to the Pawtucket people who called the local village Agawam, which is translated from Algonquin as "beyond" (aga) "the marsh" (wam).

[3] About 1623, Great Neck was purchased from the Pawtucket—presumably from their sagamore named Quonopkonat (better known by his honorific Masquenomoit or Masconomet)—by William Jeffrey (1591 – 1675) to establish a fishermen's trading post.

[12] In 1916 the farm was purchased by Robert Gray Dodge (1872 - 1964),[20] a Harvard law graduate and Boston attorney,[21] whose daughters turned it over to the care of the Trustees of Reservations in 1975.

[1] Here is a description of the Paine House on the website Historic Ipswich, which is maintained by the town historian, Gordon Harris: This saltbox was built in 1694, a well-preserved example of First Period architecture.

Sheathed walls and doors in the Paine house are decorated with shadow moldings created by planes that were run along the outer face of a board at its juncture with another, a relatively rare interior finish.