Historic Oak View traces its history to a land purchase by Benton Southworth Donaldson Williams in eastern
Wake County in 1829. This land was purchased from Arthur Pool for $135 and included 85 acres with several outbuildings none of which remain today. Williams continued to acquire land and holdings over the next 30 years; eventually including the land that houses Oak View's oldest building, the kitchen. In 1855, Williams completed construction of a two-story
Greek Revival I house which would become the centerpiece of Oak View farm for the next century. Cotton was considered "King" of the South leading up to the Civil War, and even afterwards many farmers including the Williams greatly increased their cotton production. By the 1880s, 93 percent of Wake County farms, including Oak View, produced cotton with the Williams family growing 82 bales of cotton a year. Following the Civil War, Williams was selected to be one of the four delegates representing Wake County at the 1868 North Carolina Constitutional Convention. His long-held Unionist views made him few friends in Raleigh during the Civil War, but his close association with
Governor Holden ensured his place in deciding North Carolina's future through the
Reconstruction. Of the four Wake County delegates' homes, only Oak View has survived. Many of the current outbuildings at Oak View were built during the Wyatt ownership including the cotton gin house, livestock barn, and the carriage house. Instead, the Wyatt family began using Oak View as a testing ground for their seed company that was based in Raleigh, North Carolina. They eventually shifted from predominately growing cotton to growing vegetables and
pecans. The pecan orchard that the Wyatt family planted continues to produce a crop every year and is the largest remaining grove in Wake County. Eventually, the Wyatt family traded the struggling Oak View to the Gregory-Poole family for a downtown office to help the Wyatt-Quarles Seed Company. Soon after the trade, James Gregory Poole moved into the farmhouse with his family. The Pooles lived at Oak View for three years and remodeled and updated the property. They built an addition to the house, put running water in the buildings, and electrified the property for the first time. Following their many additions, the Poole family sold the property to James and Mary Bryan in 1944. The Poole additions were the last major changes to the historic buildings and the property passed in and out of several families' hands before being purchased by Wake County in 1984. Originally intending to destroy the buildings to build an office park, several local prominent families and descendants banded together to save the property. In 1991, Historic Oak View was added to the
National Register of Historic Places and Oak View was soon turned into a Wake County park. == Current use ==