The Burlington house where General Grant sent his family for safety, and where he was headed when Lincoln was shot in April 1865.
309 Wood Street, Burlington, NJ 08016
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Privately owned and not open to the public. The house is marked with a state historical marker readable from the public sidewalk; view from the street only.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Residential street with public sidewalk; the house is privately occupied and viewed from outside
Equipment
Photos OK
Civil War-era residence of the Grant family · Connected to the night of Lincoln's assassination, April 1865 · New Jersey historical marker site · Documented in the Historic American Buildings Survey (General Grant House)
In 1864 General Ulysses S. Grant moved his family to Burlington, placing his wife Julia and their four children in a house at 309 Wood Street. Burlington offered a settled river town within reach of Philadelphia and away from the threats surrounding the capital, and Grant intended it as a refuge for his family during the closing year of the Civil War.
On April 14, 1865, the Grants were invited to join President and Mrs. Lincoln at Ford's Theatre for a performance of Our American Cousin. Grant declined; he preferred to travel to Burlington to see his family. He left Washington by train that day.
Grant knew nothing of the attack on Lincoln until his train reached Philadelphia that night, where he received word that the President had been shot. He arranged a special train and returned to Washington. Local tradition in Burlington holds that Grant brought the news of the shooting to townspeople from the house, though the firmly documented facts are that he was en route to Burlington and learned of the assassination in Philadelphia.
The house at 309 Wood Street still stands and is privately owned and occupied, not open to the public. It is marked with a New Jersey historical marker and is documented in the Historic American Buildings Survey as the General Grant House. It sits within Burlington's dense cluster of colonial and Civil War-era sites.
Sources
The interest at 309 Wood Street is historical rather than paranormal. There is no significant body of ghost reporting attached to the house in the available record. What gives the site weight for dark-history visitors is the near-miss in the assassination story.
Grant had been invited to Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865. The man who is sometimes named in plots alongside Lincoln chose instead to take a train toward this Burlington house to see his family, and so was on the rails when the President was shot. Burlington tradition adds that Grant announced the news to neighbors after arriving, though the documented account places his learning of the shooting in Philadelphia.
Because the house is a private residence, the experience is limited to reading the marker and viewing the exterior. The value is the documented connection between an ordinary brick house on a quiet street and one of the pivotal nights in American history.
Notable Entities
A free, self-guided stop at 309 Wood Street, where a New Jersey historical marker records that General Ulysses S. Grant moved his family here in 1864 and that he was en route to Burlington when he learned, in Philadelphia, that Lincoln had been assassinated. The house is a private residence; the visit is exterior viewing from the public sidewalk only.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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