As a contributing historic resource within the National Register and local Easton historic districts, the property at 208 South Street further reflects the growth of Easton as a response to the construction of the Chesapeake Railroad in 1869. The house was built c. 1880 using the period's popular national folk style for greater functionality, and sacrificed the ornate aesthetics of the neighboring Gothic Revival styled houses of South Street on the far sides of Hanson Street and Thoroughgood Lane. The duplex form of construction although unique to the block is not uncommon in Easton, reflecting the demand for denser, more affordable living as the railroad increased the Town's population and business.
Beginning around 1780, a wave of manumissions sponsored by some of the Methodist and Quaker residents of Easton began the development of The Hill neighborhood that would quickly become one of the largest, earliest free-black communities in the country. The stretch of South Street between Hanson Street and Thoroughgood Lane in the Town of Easton’s original Lot 50, where the historic duplex at 208-210 still remains, had a limited population of black homeowners despite being well within The Hill Community that was predominantly African American. In fact, U.S. Census Records as early as 1830 present the formulation of a significant amount of free black property owners just south of the historic duplex on Lot 51 of The Hill, where Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was built in 1877 and remains today. The historic duplex is a significant representation of the more vernacular architecturally designed houses of Easton's post-Civil War, Reconstruction Era. This time period after Emancipation was quite significant both nationally and locally in representing both a redevelopment of existing free black communities, such as The Hill Community within Easton, and the formulation of new black communities.