{"id":1637,"slug":"mordington-frederica-delaware","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Mordington is the mill seat's mansion — the Georgian brick house James Douglass's family built about 1790 on the dam of McColley's Pond, overlooking the Murderkill River headwaters. Its double-pile plan was unusual for Delaware; the Flemish-bond facade has barely changed since the eighteenth century. The name is family legend — said to come from a Scottish ancestor made Baron Mordington by Charles I.","The house was a slave plantation. James Douglass's runaway ads in the Delaware Gazette record two escapes — Ben in 1796, and nineteen-year-old Will in 1799, who took a bateau and rowed himself free. The National Register nomination records a darker family story: an enslaved woman who jumped from the third-story attic window after being punished. The mills ground grain and smelted bog iron; the pond, the millstones, and the house are what remain.","The file keeps Mordington: the Douglass mansion, the millpond industry, the runaway ads, and the attic window — a Georgian house that the Historic American Buildings Survey documented in 1934 and that the National Register listed among Delaware's first.","Mordington is the archive's mill-seat file — the Georgian mansion, the bog-iron mills, and the escapes the ads recorded."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Mordington is the archive's mill-seat file — the 1790 Georgian house, the Douglass mills, and the enslaved people whose escapes the newspapers document.","A mansion built on enslaved labor keeps its attic — the file's suggestion being that Mordington's hold is the evidence: the ads, the window, and the house that preserves both the wealth and its cost."]}],"name":"Mordington","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_HOUSE","type_label":"Historic House","cats":["HAUNTING"],"groups":["hauntings","historic-sites"],"desc":"Historic property associated with an enslaved-girl apparition story.","full_desc":"A historic house in Frederica, Delaware, Mordington is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Historic property associated with an enslaved-girl apparition story. HauntHunt files it with haunting reports. Ask the file who haunts it and it answers: Tom's Daughter. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend, every one filed as account rather than fact. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.","address":"South Frederica Canterbury Road","city":"Frederica","county":null,"state":"Delaware","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":39.007939,"lon":-75.466529,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":"Current ownership and visiting permission unknown; historic documentation does not authorize entry.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery or enrichment; earliest report and independent corroboration remain under research. Confidence measures source provenance, not supernatural reality.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":48.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":849,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Archives retells a pond and dining-room apparition called Tom's Daughter. Mordington in Frederica, Delaware is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. The account appears in 'Mordington — Haunted Delaware exhibit'. The apparition is the file's anchor — every other report orbits it.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":"Tom's Daughter","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.75,"conflict_notes":"Narrative abuse and death are unverified; alleged entity not merged with an established historical person.","source":{"name":"Mordington — Haunted Delaware exhibit","url":"https://www.flickr.com/photos/delawarepublicarchives/52375845222/in/album-72177720302319003","publisher":"Delaware Public Archives","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Archives retells a pond and dining-room apparition called Tom's Daughter. Mordington wears the claim the way old houses do: visibly, and without comment. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. The legend does what legends do — it explains the place in a way the records can't.","earliest":null,"evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Mordington — Haunted Delaware exhibit","url":"https://www.flickr.com/photos/delawarepublicarchives/52375845222/in/album-72177720302319003","publisher":"Delaware Public Archives","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"entities":[{"name":"Tom's Daughter","claimed_identity":"Tom's Daughter","verified":null,"summary":"Archives retells a pond and dining-room apparition called Tom's Daughter. A house with Frederica's history behind it gives the reports a setting that needs no exaggeration. The report is preserved in sources like 'Mordington — Haunted Delaware exhibit'. The file keeps Tom's Daughter on the roster; the sightings keep the name alive.","behavior":"Archives retells a pond and dining-room apparition called Tom's Daughter.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Mordington — Haunted Delaware exhibit","url":"https://www.flickr.com/photos/delawarepublicarchives/52375845222/in/album-72177720302319003","publisher":"Delaware Public Archives","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","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":"Mordington — Haunted Delaware exhibit","url":"https://www.flickr.com/photos/delawarepublicarchives/52375845222/in/album-72177720302319003","publisher":"Delaware Public Archives","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Mordington (Frederica, Delaware)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordington_(Frederica%2C_Delaware)","desc":"Historic house in Delaware, United States","extract":"Mordington, also known as the Douqlass House, is a historic home located near Frederica, Kent County, Delaware. It dates to about 1785, and is a 2+1⁄2-story, three-bay, double-pile plan, brick dwelling in the Georgian-style. It has a lower frame and brick wing to the east that was replaced in the late 1960s. The original two main doorways and most of the original interior woodwork were removed to the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Mordington%2C_Canterbury-Milford_Road%2C_Frederica_vicinity_%28Kent_County%2C_Delaware%29.jpg/330px-Mordington%2C_Canterbury-Milford_Road%2C_Frederica_vicinity_%28Kent_County%2C_Delaware%29.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":90,"lat":38.96861111,"lon":-75.49416667},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":0,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}