George Hitchcock (d. 1889), leader of the Farwell City Company, was Clare County's first postmaster and treasurer. His prosperity came from investments in the county's valuable stands of pine, harvested after the Pere Marquette and the Toledo and Ann Arbor railroads arrived in the 1870s, and from the operation of a sawmill. The house stands on the site of the old courthouse, which Hitchcock acquired after the courthouse burned in 1877 and the county seat was moved to Harrison. Hitchcock commissioned Mason and Rice, renowned Detroit architects who had offices in the same building as Hitchcock's brother-in-law and partner, Edmund Hall, to design the Queen Anne house. The two-and-a-half-story, wood-frame, clapboarded house with an angled gable and a steeply pitched hipped roof supported by consoles was built of timber chosen from Hitchcock's own forests and milled in Saginaw. Basswood, golden oak, tiger's-eye maple, cherry, birch, ash, and pine finish the interior.