In addition to its age, the house is notable locally for its role in the American Revolutionary War, when the house was owned by Thomas Hart Hooker, a descendant of Hartford's founder Thomas Hooker, and his wife Sarah Whitman Hooker. The Hookers held as captives Andrew and Philip Skene, Loyalists who were taken prisoner early in the American Revolutionary War by colonial forces that captured Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York and ransacked the elder Skene's house.