{"id":812,"slug":"corbit-sharp-house-delaware","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Corbit-Sharp House hid a man behind a door too small to check. In 1845, a fugitive named Sam came out of Maryland to the Odessa house of Quakers Daniel and Mary Corbit — a town on the line between slave Delaware and free Pennsylvania, thick with Quaker agents. When the sheriff's posse searched the house, Mary Corbit had Sam behind a tiny attic door; they didn't think to look behind it. At dusk Daniel gave him food and money and sent him north to Philadelphia.","The house itself is Delaware's finest pre-Revolutionary survivor — the twenty-two-room Philadelphia-Georgian mansion William Corbit built in 1772-74 from his tannery fortune on the Appoquinimink. The Corbitt family held it until 1938; H. Rodney Sharp restored it in the Colonial Revival era with Marian Cruger Coffin gardens. The whole Odessa streetscape — the Corbit-Sharp, the Wilson-Warner, the Collins-Sharp — survives because Sharp's preservation bought the town.","The Sam story is the house's documented heart — recounted by the Corbits' daughter Mary in 1914 from family memory, confirmed by the Network to Freedom designation on the Harriet Tubman Byway. In a slave state that never seceded, the Quaker crossroads town kept its agents: the attic door, the dusk departure, the one man who made Philadelphia because Mary Corbit thought of the space behind the door.","The Corbit-Sharp House is the archive's attic-door file — the 1772 Georgian mansion in Odessa where Mary Corbit hid the fugitive Sam behind a door the posse never checked, Delaware's documented Underground Railroad station."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Corbit-Sharp House is the archive's Sam file — the c.1772 Odessa mansion where the 1845 hiding of the fugitive Sam behind an attic door is the documented Underground Railroad episode on Delaware's Tubman Byway.","A house that hid a man keeps its door — the file's suggestion being that Corbit-Sharp's hold is the tiny door: the attic space the posse didn't check, in the Quaker town on the line between slave and free."]}],"name":"Corbit-Sharp House","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_SITE","type_label":"Historic Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD_HISTORY","AFRICAN_AMERICAN_HISTORY","HISTORIC_SITE","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD"],"groups":["dark-history","historic-sites"],"desc":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","full_desc":"Corbit-Sharp House is a historic site in Odessa, Delaware, a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing. NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad. HauntHunt files it with dark history, Underground Railroad history and the Underground Railroad. The dossier holds 2 documented facts — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. The site is open to visitors.","address":"SW corner of Main & Second Streets","city":"Odessa","county":"New Castle","state":"Delaware","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":39.456455,"lon":-75.659626,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":"NPS public listing access field: Yes. This is a listing snapshot; current arrangements still require confirmation.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 14DE02, source row 280. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":62.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.35,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Corbit-Sharp House's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer the museum itself interprets. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The detail is preserved in 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01'. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"Corbit-Sharp House is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The detail is preserved in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Historic site; verify hours and access with the managing agency before visiting; check nps.gov for current hours and alerts.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"Underground Railroad","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","incoming_value":"The Odessa house—where Sam the fugitive was sheltered.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"historic_designation","existing_value":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","incoming_value":"NPS Network to Freedom","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 14DE02, source row 280. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","incoming_value":"UGRR enrichment wave 4; VERIFY task auto-queued.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"Corbit–Sharp House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbit%E2%80%93Sharp_House","desc":"Historic house in Delaware, United States","extract":"The Corbit–Sharp House is a historic house museum located at 118 Main Street in Odessa, Delaware. Built in 1772–74, it is one of the finest examples of a brick Georgian house in the Mid-Atlantic states. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1967, and is included in the Odessa Historic District. It has been a museum, under different ownerships, since 1940.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Corbit-Sharp_House_in_2016.jpg/330px-Corbit-Sharp_House_in_2016.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":78,"lat":39.45391,"lon":-75.65694},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":2,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":3}}