Governor's House
a.k.a. Hillyard House;The Cowgill House;Woodburn
Kings Hwy., Dover, DEArchitecturally, the Governor's House is significant as a surviving example of the best-quality eighteenth-century houses in Delaware. It is preserved as an integral part of the State museum system, which strives to illustrate typical Delaware houses of various periods and economic levels.
The builder, Charles Hillyard (1759-1814) was the fourth Delaware generation of a family of affluent landowners frequently active in the government, social, and economic life of Kent County. The founder of the line, Charles Hillyard received a warrant in 1683 for 3,000 acres; this document, signed at Dover, is the only surviving evidence that the Proprietor ever visited the town.
Local tradition, supported by geographical circumstance and the owner's abolitionist tendencies, identifies this house as a station on the fabled "underground railway." George Alfred Townsend, in his novel, The Entailed Hat (published in 1884), portrayed this as the scene of an attempted kidnapping by Patty Cannon's gang. As a result of this widely-known novel, a tradition has grown up which states that Mrs. Cannon fired a pistol-shot through the north door.
Since 1965, the house has gained further significance as the residence of Delaware's governors.
The house has often been the home of famous Delaware families; Charles Hillyard, the builder, was a son-in-law of Delaware's first Chancellor, William Killen.
The house was once the residence of Delaware's first woman legislator, Mrs. Vera Davis.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.