In 1775, the house, which afforded excellent views of Dorchester Heights and Boston Neck, was requisitioned by John Thomas, then a brigadier general in the Continental Army, for use as military headquarters.

[6] In 1776, while Thomas was in residence, cannons from Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York were transported by Henry Knox to Cambridge, Massachusetts and then through Roxbury to fortify Dorchester Heights, where they were used to force the evacuation of the British from Boston on March 17.

[7] A marker commemorating the neighborhood as a stop on the Henry Knox Trail and signifying Thomas's role in ending the Siege of Boston was placed at the park in 2009.

[14] After two fires in the 1970s, then–state Representative Byron Rushing, a former Roxbury resident, successfully petitioned the legislature in 1984 for funding to restore the house and preserve it as a heritage park.

[15] According to Robert Olson, who conducted the project, architect Frank Chouteau Brown added Colonial details in the 1932 restoration that were never present in the house; for example, rough plank doors with wrought-iron hinges of a design he simply invented and a chair rail where none had existed.