Here in 1800 two slaves informed Mosby Sheppard that Gabriel Prosser was organizing a slave rebellion. The miscreants were stopped and punished, and the event caused a series of reforms that diminished the rights of enslaved and freed blacks in Virginia.

The property is now a Henrico County park comprising a series of buildings. The main structure is the Sheppard-Crump house (c. 1800, c. 1820, c. 1840, c. 1854; 1990, restoration), a one-and-one-half-story, five-bay, gableroofed wooden I-house. It was built as a side-entrance, three-bay I-house; two bays were added to the west end for a parlor c. 1820. A shed-roofed porch, later enclosed, was added c. 1840, along with the Greek Revival entrance portico. Around 1854 a two-story wing with bracketed eaves was added to the rear, making a T-shaped plan. The house apparently remained unpainted until the 1930s. Restored to the period 1830–1860, it contains mostly original furnishings. Also on the property are outbuildings for animals and a blacksmith shed, both original and reconstructions that illustrate the farm life of a mid-nineteenth-century Virginia farm. The museum also owns a significant collection of Richmond-area folk art.