Woodburn: The Haunted Governor's House in Dover

Woodburn stands on Kings Highway in Dover, a handsome brick Georgian house set back behind lawns and old trees, a few minutes’ walk from the Old State House. Since 1965 it has been the official home of the Governor of Delaware. It is also, by long tradition, the most haunted house in the state.

What makes Woodburn different from most haunted houses is who tells the stories. The best known of them, about a preacher who met the dead builder of the house on the staircase, appears on the governor’s own official Woodburn website, along with a first lady’s account of leaving out wine for the ghost. Other tales, of a wine-drinking spirit, a girl in a gingham dress and a slave raider in a poplar tree, have been retold in newspapers and magazines for decades. Here is what is documented, what is legend and how you can see the house.

History of Woodburn

The land Woodburn stands on was granted to David Morgan in 1684. Charles Hillyard III bought it at a sheriff’s sale in the 1780s and built the house in the 1790s; the state’s Woodburn website dates it to about 1798 and calls it one of the finest Middle Period Georgian houses in Delaware. It is a substantial brick house of two and a half stories with seven bedrooms, set on a large lot near the center of Dover.

Hillyard died in 1814 and the house passed to his daughter Mary and her husband, Dr. Martin W. Bates. In 1825 it was bought by Daniel and Mary Cowgill. Local tradition, the house’s location and Daniel Cowgill’s Quaker and abolitionist views have led many to believe Woodburn was a stop on the Underground Railroad, though there is no firm record of it. A related legend, which seems to come from George Alfred Townsend’s 1884 novel The Entailed Hat, says the kidnapping gang of the notorious Patty Cannon once tried to seize people sheltering here.

Later owners included Daniel O. Hastings, who bought the house in 1912, and Frank Hall, who bought it in 1918 and lived there until his death in 1953. The state’s website says the house has been home over the years to gentlemen farmers, an abolitionist, two US senators, two doctors, a dentist and a judge.

In 1965 Governor Charles L. Terry Jr. and his wife Jessica secured Woodburn for the state as the official governor’s residence, and after renovation it opened to the public in February 1966. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Eight recent governors have lived there, and it is still used for official receptions and occasional public events.

The ghosts of Woodburn

The old man on the stairs

Woodburn’s founding ghost story is told on the governor’s own website. Around 1815, about 25 years after the house was built, Dr. and Mrs. Martin Bates had as their guest Lorenzo Dow, a well-known traveling Methodist preacher. At breakfast, asked to say grace, Dow hesitated and asked whether they should wait for the other guest. Mrs. Bates said there was nobody else in the house. Dow described the man he had just passed on the stairs: an older gentleman in a powdered wig, knee breeches and a ruffled shirt. It was a fair description of Mrs. Bates’s father, Charles Hillyard III, who had built the house and had recently died, and the website says it bothered her a great deal.

Later owner Frank Hall said he too sometimes passed Hillyard on the stairs and described him the same way.

The ghost who drinks the wine

According to Dover history, Hillyard enjoyed a strong drink, and the house’s staff still use a simple test: leave a glass of wine downstairs at night, and if it is empty in the morning, Hillyard has been wandering again. Jeanne Tribbitt, wife of Governor Tribbitt, admitted on the state’s site that she checked the staircase and left wine out several times with no result. She did not tell her husband, she said, or he would have drunk the wine himself to tease her.

Other retellings say a previous owner found his decanter empty every morning after filling it at night, and that during Governor Terry’s time a ghost was blamed for vintage wine disappearing from the dining room.

The girl in gingham

The most recent famous sighting came in 1985. Live Science and other outlets report that during Governor Mike Castle’s inauguration, guests saw a small girl in a gingham dress, and some say they felt a tug on their clothes before seeing her in a corner of the reception hall. Others describe her in a red checked dress, playing by the pools and fountains in the garden. Nobody has suggested who she might be.

The raider in the poplar tree

The darkest Woodburn legend belongs to the Cowgill years. It says slave raiders came to the house looking for people hidden there, and one of them climbed the poplar tree in the front yard, slipped and was hanged in a fork of the branches. Some say his screams and the clank of chains can still be heard. This story has no record behind it, and it may have grown out of the same 19th-century fiction as the Patty Cannon tale, so treat it as legend.

Footsteps in the dining room

Governors’ wives are said to have heard footsteps at night, and figures in Revolutionary-era dress have been described drifting across the dining room. These accounts come from popular retellings rather than named witnesses.

Where to look

• The main staircase: where Lorenzo Dow and Frank Hall met the old man in the powdered wig.
• The dining room: the scene of the disappearing wine and the night footsteps.
• The reception hall: where guests at the 1985 inauguration saw the girl in gingham.
• The garden pools and fountains: another place the little girl is said to play.
• The front-yard poplars: the setting of the hanged raider legend.

Visiting Woodburn

Woodburn is the governor’s home, so it is not a museum you can drop into. The state’s Woodburn website says tours are not currently available to the public, but the house opens for public events from time to time, such as holiday open houses and seasonal gatherings, which are listed on its visiting page. Check there before you go.

At any time you can see the house from Kings Highway SW, a short walk from Dover’s Green and the Old State House. Please stay on the public sidewalk and respect the residence and its security staff. There are no ghost tours or investigations at Woodburn.

Dover’s history district makes a good half day: the Green, the Old State House and, a few miles southeast, the free John Dickinson Plantation. For a night investigating a historic building, the nearest Haunted Rooms ghost hunts are listed below.

• Visiting The governor’s residence; tours are not currently offered, with occasional public events
• Tours No regular tours at present
• Hours and season Grounds and house open only for scheduled public events
• Tickets Free when open for events
• Ghost hunting No ghost hunting at the governor’s residence

Tips for your visit

• Watch woodburn.delaware.gov for open house dates; they are the only way inside.
• Walk over from the Green in Dover and view the house from the sidewalk.
• Pair it with the John Dickinson Plantation, about ten minutes away by car.
• In the fall, look out for nighttime lantern tours of the Green in First State Heritage Park.

More haunted places nearby

• John Dickinson Plantation: the Penman of the Revolution’s boyhood home
• Belmont Hall, Smyrna: a sentry’s ghost on a widow’s walk
• Haunted hotels in Delaware: where to stay the night
• Haunted places in Delaware

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Woodburn, the Governor's House (official site)
• Woodburn: The Woodburn ghost
• Wikipedia: Delaware Governor's Mansion
• Live Science: 10 of the spookiest haunted houses in America (2015)
• OnlyInYourState: Woodburn Mansion is said to be full of hauntings
• Delaware DNREC: Unveiling Delaware's dark secrets, the haunted Fort Delaware and beyond
• Visit Delaware: Delaware's ghostly haunts