CANNONBALL HOUSE
Museum — 118 Front Street, Lewes, Delaware
Status: Historic site · Access: Restricted access
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/cannonball-house-lewes-delaware/

Maritime museum associated with an unnamed-woman ghost story.

Cannonball House is a museum in Lewes, Delaware. Maritime museum associated with an unnamed-woman ghost story. The house was damaged in the War of 1812 bombardment; Historic Lewes acquired it in 1963 for preservation and museum use. Local lore holds that The Archives exhibit recounts a woman allegedly haunting the house after a fireplace accident.

The Cannonball House is the house the Royal Navy hit — April 6-7, 1813, the twenty-two-hour bombardment of Lewes when Commodore Beresford's squadron shelled the town for refusing supplies. The McCracken family's house took a ball in the foundation — the only surviving Lewes structure still marked by the bombardment, the cannonball that stayed in the wall for two centuries.
The town held — the hastily built pine-log fort, the militia Gilbert McCracken and his son served in, the governor who came from Dover to refuse the requisition. The British damaged a gunboat and left; Lewes had no casualties. The house became everything else — sewing shop, bank, taxi stand — before the Historical Society bought it in 1963 for the Maritime Museum. The replica ball in the foundation now is a replacement; the patched hole is the original wound.
The file keeps the Cannonball House: the 1813 bombardment, the lodged ball, the museum, and the replaced cannonball.
Cannonball House is the archive's War-of-1812 file — the house that kept the hit.

WHY THIS FILE MATTERS
Cannonball House is the archive's War-of-1812 file — the building that still shows the bombardment.
A house keeps its scar — the file's suggestion being that the Cannonball House's hold is the patch: the foundation hole where the British ball struck, the town that refused to surrender, and the only surviving structure that bears the mark.

FILED CLAIMS — 1 on record, reported not verified
· [Local folklore] apparition: The Archives exhibit recounts a woman allegedly haunting the house after a fireplace accident. Cannonball House in Lewes, Delaware curates the past professionally; the reports suggest some of the past curates back. The claim is neighborhood knowledge — retold locally, verified nowhere. The figure remains the site's most-repeated sighting.
  source: Cannonball House — Haunted Delaware exhibit (https://www.flickr.com/photos/delawarepublicarchives/52377219830/in/album-72177720302319003)

HISTORY — 1 documented facts
· The house was damaged in the War of 1812 bombardment; Historic Lewes acquired it in 1963 for preservation and museum use. Cannonball House's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer the museum itself interprets. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. 'Cannonball House Maritime Museum' documents the entry. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.

SOURCES — 3 cited
· Cannonball House Maritime Museum — Historic Lewes
  https://www.historiclewes.org/locations/maritime-museum-at-the-cannonball-house/
· Cannonball House — Haunted Delaware exhibit — Delaware Public Archives
  https://www.flickr.com/photos/delawarepublicarchives/52377219830/in/album-72177720302319003
· Lewes historic property survey: Phase II final 2016 — City of Lewes
  https://www.ci.lewes.de.us/DocumentCenter/View/3708/Phase-II-Final-2016

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HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not.
Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/