Woodlands Farm History

Woodlands was built around 1785 by John Tompkins, who built the house for his daughter Peggy and her husband William Wilson. The property was a successful farm and stayed in the Tompkins family for several generations until it was sold shortly after the Civil War. The house was purchased by Col. George L. J. Thomas in 1867, who made additions and improvements to the house and surrounding buildings. George Thomas' children attended school on the property, in a small wooden schoolhouse whose brick chimney still stands today. More additions and renovations were made around the turn of the century, including the construction of a small family cemetery. Woodlands stayed in the Thomas family for more than a century before it eventually passed to its current owners in the late 1980s.

In 1960, Woodlands was surveyed as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey conducted by the Library of Congress. The photographs and written accounts from that survey are displayed below: