Cannonball House

The Cannonball House stands on Front Street in Lewes, Delaware, close to the water where the Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic. The Lewes Historical Society dates it to about 1765, while the Delaware Public Archives marker text puts it at around 1760, enlarged in the 1790s. It was the home of river-and-bay pilots, the men who guided ships up the treacherous Delaware, and its early occupants are named as David Rowland and Gilbert McCracken. The house takes its nickname from an iron ball lodged in its foundation, said to date from the British naval bombardment of Lewes on 6–7 April 1813, during the War of 1812.

That bombardment is the best-documented drama in the building’s past. A British squadron enforcing a blockade of the Delaware shelled the town for two days, damaging homes and businesses, while local militia – among them McCracken and his son Henry – turned out to defend it. Over the following centuries the house became a mayor’s office, a restaurant and even a laundromat before townspeople rescued it. The Lewes Historical Society bought it in 1963, and today it serves as a maritime museum. In February 2023 the famous cannonball itself briefly made the news when Lewes police reported it missing, with the society’s director saying he suspected theft.

The ghost stories are a more recent layer, and they do not agree with one another. The most common version describes a young woman who lived in the house and died when her skirts caught fire at the hearth. Local press has named her Susan Rowland, a pilot’s daughter, while a 2014 television report from WMDT called her Sarah Rolan; neither name has been tied to a record in the sources consulted. Museum staff and volunteers have told reporters about tools that move between visits, a door that will not stay shut, and a missing key that turns up again. Upstairs footsteps are said by some to belong to the wives of seafarers, still pacing as they wait for ships to return.

Paranormal groups have been invited in. In 2014 Delmarva Historic Haunts led a session for WMDT, using a flashlight, a candle near the unused fireplace and a “Ghost Meter Pro” to ask yes-or-no questions; the team reported answers that fit the fire story, though the reporter admitted the account was anecdotal. Since then the Lewes Historical Society has folded the legend into its programming, including paranormal evenings and a Lewes Legends walking tour that visits the house, treating the stories as part of local lore alongside the real history of the pilots and the 1813 attack.

Staff and volunteers report tools and objects being moved, a door that will not stay closed, a missing key that reappears, footsteps overhead in empty rooms and an apparition said to be a young woman in period dress.

Chiefly the upper floors and the old fireplace area of the museum; activity is mostly reported by staff, volunteers and ghost-hunt participants after hours or during evening events.

The house is a regular stop on the Lewes Historical Society’s Lewes Legends walking tour and its seasonal paranormal evenings, and features in regional roundups of Delaware’s haunted places alongside Fort Delaware and Old New Castle.