Built in the Antebellum Era, it was the birthplace of U.S. Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, and it belonged to Georgia Governor Charles J. McDonald's daughter after the war.

The house was built the 1850s for Richard W. Joyner and his wife, née Lucretia Richardson.

In 1861, at the outset of the American Civil War, it was purchased by Reverend Isaac M. Springer, who turned it into a boarding school.

Their son, William Gibbs McAdoo, who went on to serve as the 46th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1913 to 1918, was born in the house.

At the end of the war, it was sold to Confederate Colonel Alexander Smith Atkinson, who lived here with his wife, Mary Ann McDonald, the daughter of Georgia Governor Charles J.