About New Castle Court House Museum
New Castle Court House Museum occupies the brick courthouse that served Delaware's colonial assembly, early courts, and first state government. Built in 1732 over the remains of an earlier courthouse, it became the setting for Delaware's June 15, 1776 Separation Resolution breaking political ties with both Pennsylvania and Great Britain, followed by adoption of the state's first constitution that September.
The building also carries an important Underground Railroad story: abolitionists Thomas Garrett and John Hunn were tried here in federal court in 1848 for assisting a freedom-seeking family. Guided tours interpret law, government, colonial settlement, the Underground Railroad, and the people who shaped these events through historic rooms, portraits, furnishings, artifacts, and exhibits. Visitors stand in the actual building where formative moments in Delaware's political identity and later conflicts over slavery and federal law took place.
