{"id":3675,"slug":"jacob-and-hannah-leverton-house-preston-maryland","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Leverton farm was 'the main stopping place' — the phrase comes from agent William T. Kelley's 1902 letter, remembering the Quaker household near the Caroline–Dorchester line where the Eastern Shore's Underground Railroad had its epicenter. Jacob and Hannah Leverton sheltered the freedom seekers; their son Arthur conveyed them to the next station; and their neighbor Daniel Hubbard — a free Black ship carpenter — took others at his adjoining farm. Together the Leverton-Hubbard network ran a thirteen-hundred-acre enclave of cooperating agents, white and Black, on the line between two slaveholding counties.","The network likely knew Harriet Tubman — she escaped from Poplar Neck in Caroline County in 1849, and most biographers believe the Leverton-Hubbard route carried her north. Kelley's letter keeps the details: fugitives arrived 'often showing evidences of cruelty... stained with blood,' and were fed, clothed, and 'directed onwards toward the North Star, which we particularly requested them to learn.' Jacob once helped a battered girl escape her pursuers before they arrived at the farm demanding answers.","The work ended in exposure — in January 1858, after the network was uncovered, Arthur Leverton and Daniel Hubbard had to flee their own homes ahead of a mob. The Federal-period brick house still stands in its field off Seaman Road — a Network to Freedom site and stop 22 on the Harriet Tubman Byway, the farmhouse that was the main stopping place of a county line the enslaved crossed toward the North Star.","The Leverton House is the archive's network file — the Quaker farm that ran a documented UGRR enclave with a free Black neighbor, probably carried Harriet Tubman, and ended with its agents fleeing the mob they had provoked by freeing people."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Jacob and Hannah Leverton House is the archive's main-stopping-place file — the Quaker farm on the Caroline–Dorchester line that anchored a 1,300-acre interracial Underground Railroad network, likely assisted Harriet Tubman's 1849 escape, and was exposed in 1858 when its agents fled a mob.","A station run by neighbors keeps its boundary line — the file's suggestion being that the Leverton House's hold is the enclave: the Quaker and the free Black ship carpenter running stations side by side on adjoining farms, in the county Tubman escaped from."]}],"name":"Jacob and Hannah Leverton 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":"The Quaker house—where the Levertons hid the fugitives.","full_desc":"A historic site in Preston, Maryland, an NPS Network to Freedom, Jacob and Hannah Leverton House is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The Quaker house—where the Levertons hid the fugitives. The archive files it under Underground Railroad history, the Underground Railroad and African American history. The dossier holds 2 documented facts — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Preston","county":null,"state":"Maryland","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":38.710212,"lon":-75.907528,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"NPS Network to Freedom","current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"UGRR enrichment wave 1; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":67.9,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"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. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. Sources including 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01' carry the record. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.","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":"Jacob and Hannah Leverton 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 fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The detail is preserved in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","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":[],"wiki":{"title":"Jacob and Hannah Leverton House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_and_Hannah_Leverton_House","desc":"Historic house in Maryland, United States","extract":"Jacob and Hannah Leverton House, also known as the Dyott Farm, is a historic home located at Linchester, near Preston, in Caroline County, Maryland, United States.  It is a two-story side-passage-plan brick house with a gable roof constructed in the first quarter of the 19th century.  A two-bay, two-story frame wing was built in 1968 to replace the original 1+1⁄2-story wing.  It was the home of Jacob and Hannah Leverton, Quakers, who were agents of the Underground Railroad.\nIt was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Harriet_Tubman_Underground_Railroad_Byway_-_Leverton_Safe_House_-_NARA_-_7719101.jpg/960px-Harriet_Tubman_Underground_Railroad_Byway_-_Leverton_Safe_House_-_NARA_-_7719101.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":104,"lat":38.70244167,"lon":-75.89125833},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":2,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":3}}