The heritage park is located in the John Eliot Square area of northern Roxbury, which was the site of the town center after its founding in 1630. The Georgian-style home was built as a parsonage for Rev. Oliver Peabody, pastor of the First Church of Roxbury in 1750. The house was later owned by Martha Dillaway and then John Thomas, an American commander in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. While Thomas owned the house in 1776, cannons from Fort Ticonderoga in New York were transported by Henry Knox to Cambridge, Massachusetts and then through Roxbury on the way to forming the Fortification of Dorchester Heights, where they were used to force the evacuation of the British from Boston on March 17. A marker commemorating the neighborhood as a stop on the Knox trail and signifying Thomas' role in ending the Siege of Boston was placed at the park in 2009. The marker was the 57th placed to commemorate the Knox Expedition, and the first added since the string of monuments marking the trail was established in 1927.