The Peter Paul House, a log building near Dayton in Rockingham County, is one of a small group of Continental farmhouses surviving as relics of the heavy Swiss and German settlement in the Shenandoah Valley. Built on land purchased by Paul from the Harrison family, founders of nearby Harrisonburg, this central-chimney dwelling is also one of the latest and the furthest south of these European-derived houses.

Many of the Rockingham County records have been destroyed by fire, but it appears that the first European owner of the land on which the Peter Paul House stands was Daniel Harrison, who settled in the area in the mid-l8th century. Peter Paul first appeared in the, written records of the area in a listing in the Rockingham County Personal Property Tax Books of 1802 charging him with the ownership of four horses. In 1804 he was recorded as owning 120 acres of land, which increased to 187 acres in 1814 when it was listed as lying on a branch of Cook's Creek. Increases in these holdings over the next few years indicate that Paul acquired all of his tracts from Benjamin Harrison, an heir of Daniel Harrison.

Probably about 1810, but certainly before 1820, when the land tax records show a $250 valuation for buildings, Paul built a three-room, central-chimney log Flurkuchenhaus, a traditional house form in the Rhineland and in Switzerland. His house was atypical in being set on a flat site, rather than into a bank, the latter a characteristic siting of Germanic houses. Furthermore, houses of this type were rarely built in Virginia after 1800. The Peter Paul House may be the latest example now standing in the state.

In 1829 he added a two-room ell to the house, a standard form of addition to houses in the Valley. This construction increased the value of his buildings to $600. Paul died at mid-century, and the property was inherited by his sons. Now an unoccupied house on a working farm, the house is in need of renovation. - NRHP, 16 October 1979