Fort Delaware

The story

Fort Delaware sits on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River, about a mile from Delaware City. Earlier forts stood on the island from the 1810s; sources differ on their dates and on how they ended (the National Register nomination mentions a fire in 1831, Wikipedia a demolition in 1833). New Jersey also claimed the island, and Wikipedia says an arbiter ruled for Delaware on 15 January 1848. Work on the pentagon-shaped fort that stands today began in 1848, with construction proper in 1849 according to the nomination, on a design associated with the engineer Joseph Gilbert Totten. The nomination describes granite walls between 7 and 30 feet thick, a moat and three tiers of guns. Sources differ on when it was finished: the nomination says 1859, while Wikipedia says the post engineer did not declare it finished until 1868.

The fort was first garrisoned in 1861, and during the Civil War it became a prison. After the battle of Kernstown in 1862 about 250 men from Stonewall Jackson's army arrived as the first Confederate prisoners, in a fort that had not been planned for prisoners. The nomination counts some 12,500 prisoners in August 1863, after Gettysburg; Wikipedia says more than 11,000. About 33,000 people were held there over the war. The dead number about 2,500, or about 7.6 percent, according to Wikipedia, and about half died in a smallpox epidemic in 1863. The nomination says about 2,700, so treat all of these as estimates. Many of the dead are buried at Finn's Point National Cemetery across the river in New Jersey. Political prisoners were also held; the last prisoner left in 1865.

In the 1890s a concrete gun battery was built inside the fort. The fort was garrisoned again briefly in the First World War, the large guns were removed in 1943 (Wikipedia dates gun removals to 1940 and 1942), and the fort closed in 1944. It passed to the State of Delaware in 1947, according to the nomination, and became a state park in 1951, according to the University of Delaware library.

The legend

The ghost stories are about the Confederate prisoners and a few other figures. A University of Delaware library article from October 2023 and the state's environmental agency (DNREC) describe soldiers in the prison barracks, a "Lady in Black" who stalks the kitchen and whom staff say they have met, children's spirits in the officers' quarters and a "blue man" photographed by a visitor. A 2013 blog, Skate Guard, tells of an undated "Kitchen Ghost" in the officers' kitchen; nothing we read says she and the Lady in Black are the same. None of these ghosts has a verified identity. A story of a nine-year-old Confederate drummer who tried to escape in a coffin is repeated on legend sites we did not read directly, and we found no historical source for it.

Dating the tradition is the hard part. The oldest traces we read are television. The show Ghost Hunters investigated the fort twice, including a live Halloween broadcast in 2008 (Wikipedia gives no more exact date), and the British series Most Haunted also visited. The main written source is Ed Okonowicz's book Civil War Ghosts at Fort Delaware (Stackpole, 13 February 2012), which its publisher says draws on staff and visitor comments. We found no ghost account earlier than 2008. There may be older oral tradition among staff, but we could not find it written down. In a search of old Delaware newspapers the only item we read was a Daily Republican piece of 13 August 1879, "Letter from Delaware City", describing a ball at the fort, with nothing supernatural in it.

So the logic of the legend is plausible, not proven. The prison conditions, with smallpox, diarrhea and pneumonia, are documented, and so are the deaths. We found no document of the apparitions. Paranormal tours of the park have been run by a volunteer group, the Diamond State Ghost Investigators, for about 15 years according to DNREC, and they reportedly sell out months ahead.

What remains today

The fort is intact and is a National Register site. The island and fort belong to the state and are run as Fort Delaware State Park, with a living-history museum. The Fort Delaware Society was formed to help with preservation and interpretation.

Visiting

Fort Delaware is open as a state park, and boat access from Delaware City runs in season. A ferry was mentioned in 2018 and 2019 reporting, but we could not read the current schedule because the official site was blocked to us, so check the Delaware State Parks website before planning. DNREC says ghost tours run in the fall. A fort that held thousands of prisoners and where many died deserves a respectful visit. Do not confuse it with Fort Mott in New Jersey or Fort DuPont in Delaware, which are separate sites nearby.

Sources

1. National Register nomination #71000226 (texte intégral) — U.S. National Park Service · Public record
2. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #71000226) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
3. Prison life during the rebellion. Being a brief narrative of the miseries and sufferings of six hundred Confederate prisoners sent from Fort Delaware to Morris' Island to be punished — Internet Archive · [Dunkle, John J.] [from old catalog], 1869-01-01 · Public domain (pre-1929)
4. Wikimedia Commons category : Fort Delaware — Wikimedia Commons
5. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Wilmington, DE 1959 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1959 · Public domain (USGS)
6. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Wilmington, DE 1904 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1904 · Public domain (USGS)
7. Fort Delaware: Civil War ghosts and... — Skate Guard (blog), 2013-10
8. Unveiling Delaware's Dark Secrets: exploring the haunted Fort Delaware and beyond — DNREC
9. View from the Vault: Civil War Ghosts at Fort Delaware — University of Delaware Library, 2023-10-11
10. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.