John P. Hale House

Built 1813, this 3-story brick residence was the home of the first abolitionist US Senator, John Parker Hale. Now part of the Woodman Institute, the Hale House was built by Capt. William Palmer for Dover merchant John Williams in 1813. Williams has been called Dover's "captain of industry" during a time when the Garrison City was among the most successful textile manufacturers in the world, while benefiting from using slave labor.

Williams was the founder of the Upper Factory cotton mill in Dover and the house was Williams' residence until November, 1840 when he sold it to J P Hale who kept it as his residence for 33 years. Living in Williams' own house, John Parker Hale (1806-1873), took a solid stand against slavery -- a position that earned him enmity from Southern leaders and a death threat on the Senate floor from a colleague.

White House records show that retiring Senator Hale, defeated after 20 years, met with Abraham Lincoln on the morning of the President's assassination where he was granted an ambassadorship to Spain, which he requested partly, to remove his daughter Lucy from the influence of her new "fiancé", an actor named John Wilkes Booth. As the story is told, Booth killed Lincoln that very evening. The Hale's lived out the next few years in Spain, and JP Hale returned to Dover with his daughter and died soon after in 1873.

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