The John Miley Maphis House is located on high ground across a creek from the Shenandoah County village of Lantz Mill. This two-story, frame farm house was built in 1856 as the residence of a prosperous miller and merchant. The John Miley Maphis House is a nearly unaltered example of the type of “hall-and-parlor” houses that were widespread in the Shenandoah Valley in the mid- to late-19th century. In addition to the house, the property also features a circa-1870 bank barn with forebay that replaced one destroyed during the Civil War, a circa-1900 wash house, and circa-1920 chicken house. John Miley Maphis was financially ruined by the Civil War, and sold the property to his wife Elizabeth in order to protect the property from debt collectors. He died in 1889, and following Elizabeth’s death in 1894, the house and farm were sold out of the family. Between 1894 and 1987, the John Miley Maphis House and farm passed through a number of different owners, including some long-time neighbors of the property. In 1987, it was purchased by Ann Cottrell Free, a Richmond-born journalist and author who often worked for the humane treatment of animals, and who was the first woman Washington correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune , the Chicago Sun, and Newsweek magazine, covering wartime Washington. Later, she was a special correspondent for the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration in China and for the Marshall Plan in Europe.