Edwin J. Amiss built this imposing brick mansion around 1856 on an elevated hillock which then commanded the road into the Montgomery County town of Blacksburg. Amiss, a merchant and landowner, assembled several tracts, including a 125-acre parcel where the house was erected. The finely appointed Amiss-Palmer House boasts a Flemish-bond brick façade, an entrance portico with paired Ionic columns, and marble mantels within. On the grounds are three early outbuildings: a brick kitchen, a log cottage probably for enslaved individuals, and a log meat house. The place was purchased in 1880 by W. H. Palmer, Amiss’s son-in-law, who added a deck-on-hip roof over the original lower roof. The surrounding farmland was developed in the mid-20th century, reducing the tract around the house to a three-acre yard. Despite the loss of its rural setting, the Amiss-Palmer House remains one of Blacksburg’s principal antebellum landmarks.

The Amiss-Palmer House was listed in the registers under the Prehistoric and Historic Resources of Montgomery County MPD.