Caroline County is one of only a handful of counties in the United States that existed for more than 300 years solely dependent on an agriculturally-based economy. This distinction along with its geography – it is land-locked – provided unique challenges for its seemingly isolated residents.The Museum of Rural Life offers visitors a rare glimpse into this world through historic dwellings. Highlights include an exhibit of all or a portion of four historic houses:• Painter’s Range, an entire log cabin home of a tenant or subsistence farmer, circa 1824
• Chance’s Desire, home of a “middling planter,” circa 1787
• Skillington’s Right, home of the Fraziers, a wealthy planter family, circa 1795
• Taylor-Brown House, built for merchant-broker Solomon Brown in 1819 and later owned by the Taylors, an African American family. This house was moved twice by mule cart and survived the fire that leveled most of Denton on July 4, 1865, when balls of candlewick and kerosene were flung in celebration at a Civil War reconciliation picnic.