Underground Railroad Tour
A One-Day Tour in Central Delaware

Delaware was officially a slave state from colonial settlement through the Civil War, but many Kent County Quakers and Methodists spoke out bravely against slavery and helped to harbor and transport slaves who were escaping bondage in the south. From her hometown of Cambridge, Maryland, beloved leader Harriet Tubman guided fugitives up the Choptank River into Camden, Delaware. Visitors to Central Delaware can see and visit some of the very buildings and landscapes where this struggle against slavery was played out.

Begin your Underground Railroad Tour with a visit to the John Dickinson Plantation south of Dover. This 1740 home was once an active slave-holding plantation that depended on the labor of slaves, free blacks, and other tenant farmers. The “World’s Apart” Slavery Tour at the plantation is guided by a costumed interpreter who discusses what colonial plantation life was like for its many residents. John Dickinson was ahead of his time in manumitting his slaves upon his death in the late 1700’s. 

The tour travels next to downtown Dover, to Woodburn, the Governor’s Mansion. Built around 1790, the home once contained a tunnel from the basement to the nearby St. Jones River. The tunnel was used by fugitives who traveled back and forth from transportation on the river to a hiding place in the home. Visitors can still see the tunnel door in the basement. Woodburn was also the site of an unsuccessful kidnapping raid by notorious murderess Patty Cannon of Reliance, Delaware (near Seaford). She was a brutal person who, with her gang, captured fugitive slaves and killed them or sold them back into slavery. Across the street from Woodburn, the Dover Public Library keeps a hatbox that contains an actual human skull, believed to be Patty Cannon’s! 

Enjoy a lunch of seafood and other local specialties at a Dover-area restaurant.

Make a final stop at the Delaware State Visitor Center in downtown Dover for an African American Heritage Tour of the State House. As visitors sit in the judge and jury boxes of this 1792 courtroom, a Delaware State Museums guide will tell about a real-life trial held there involving a captured fugitive, the threat to return him to bondage, and the trial’s surprise ending.