Dating from the second millennium BCE, the Dodona shrine was considered to be second in prestige only to Delphi. Due to the large amount of oak trees located on and around the property, naming the house Dodona Manor seemed appropriate. There is evidence that a two-story house existed on the property with five-course American brickwork in the early 1800s. John Drish, who purchased the property in 1805, added a Federal-style wing with Flemish bond brickwork and keystone arches in the mid-1820s and gave the property to his son Wilson Drish, who sold it to Fayette Ball, a distant relative of George Washington, in 1855. In 1856, the Rev. Charles Nourse, principal of the Leesburg Academy, purchased it. He tried unsuccessfully to sell it in 1859, and then opened the Loudoun Female Collegiate Institute in the house in 1860, after completing an addition to increase the number of bedrooms. Subsequent owners included Sophia Delany, Joseph and Martha Prather, Wallace and Sally George, Yvon and Ella Pike and Marcia McCann Ely and Northcutt Ely, who added electricity and indoor plumbing and eventually sold it to the Marshalls. The Marshalls also added two bay windows, a stone court, and changed the wooden porch to a more durable brick. Dodona Manor is unique among historic houses because over 90% of the furnishings and memorabilia in the house were owned and used by the Marshalls and were obtained from Mrs. Marshall's heirs. Due to the extensive disrepair over time, detailed plans for the conservation and placement of the collection and for the reproduction of the original floor and wall coverings were developed by Dr. William Seale, a leading expert in the field, and Anne Horstman, who served as executive vice president of the Marshall Center during the restoration. Among the items are originals or reproductions of art given to the Marshalls, including a reproduction of "View of Tinherir", painted by Sir Winston Churchill in Morocco in 1951 and given to the Marshalls in 1953. The original "View of Tinherir" was sold at auction by Marshall's granddaughter Kitty Winn in 2006 for £612,800 ($1.2 million), a record price for a Churchill painting at that time. Another reproduction is "Evening", by Russian artist Vassily Baksheyev. The original was a gift to Marshall from Vyacheslav Molotov, foreign minister of the Soviet Union, in 1947 in appreciation for Marshall's efforts in World War II.