The John Wheeler House is a fine brick home originally built in 1810. It is owned and has been restored by the Murfreesboro Historical Association and is furnished with authentic pieces of the period and some of the Wheeler Family's original possessions. The property also has a lovely garden in the back. In 1814, John Wheeler purchase the building which was being used as a store belonging ot William Hardy Murfree and George Godwin. Wheeler turned the building into his family's residence, and they lived there until 1867. The dining room is the only brick dependency in Murfreesboro. Wheeler was married three times and had 19 children. His son, John Hill Wheeler, was the first native North Carolinian to write a history of the state, and he was the first U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua. According to Wikipedia, "'The Bondwoman's Narrative' is a novel by Hannah Crafts who claimed to have escaped from slavery in North Carolina. The manuscript was not authenticated and properly published until 2002. Some scholars believe that the novel was written between 1853 and 1861. It is one of the very first books by an African-American woman. The 2002 publication includes a preface by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., professor of African-American literature and history at Harvard University, describing his buying the manuscript, verifying it, and research to identify the author. Crafts was believed to be a pseudonym of an enslaved woman who had escaped from the plantation of John Hill Wheeler. In September 2013, Gregg Hecimovich, a professor of English at Winthrop University, documented the novelist as Hannah Bond, an African-American slave who escaped about 1857 from the plantation of Wheeler in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. She reached the North and settled in New Jersey." The Wheeler House is open by request for private tours, school groups, and is open several times a year during events hosted by the Murfreesboro Historical Association. The association's annual Garden Party is held each spring in the garden of the Wheeler House.