The Settler's House, together with the Cappon House (
OT3), also now owned by the City of Holland and operated by the Holland Museum, speaks of immigration to western Michigan of a working-class family of Irish Canadian descent and of an upper-middle-class family of Dutch ancestry. Irish Canadian immigrant Thomas Morrissey, who was a ship's carpenter, built the hall-and-parlor-type house for his wife, Anna, and their eventual five children.

The restoration project for both houses and the conversion of a barn behind the Cappon House for a visitors' center was part of a larger campaign undertaken by the Holland Historical Trust to fund a comprehensive plan to restore these buildings and preserve their surrounding neighborhood along 9th Street (including the Jan Stoewenajs House [1890] at 212 W. 9th Street, now owned by the Holland Historical Trust and used as a single-family rental), to restore Holland Museum properties, and to create a new collections center. The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the White House Millennium Committee designated the Cappon House and Settler's House museums an official project of the Save America's Treasures program.