An article at The Staunton News Leader (Central Shenandoah Valley, VA) by Christina Murphy mentions a farm and house that has been in the family since 1745. In the United States, that has to be close to a record (if it’s not a record).
Excerpt from the article:
The community itself is as old as Frances Patterson’s dark pine floorboards. The farm behind her house is called Willow Grove, but in 1745 it had another name: Harriston.
The original farm swept all the way to the Blue Ridge mountains and to Albemarle County. James Craig built the house in the mid-1700s. His daughter Polly married John Patterson, and today it’s a Patterson who farms the remaining 300 or so acres.
Eighty-year-old Frances Patterson keeps her home’s history preserved in her collection of writings about it, in the old drawing that hangs on the wall and in the home itself. She said the house got a flurry of attention back when genealogy first came in vogue. But on a recent summer day the farm is quiet, peaceful — just as she likes it.