Dr. George Haines House

33 North Main Street
Medford, Burlington County There is considerable evidence that this house
was part of New Jersey’s Underground Railroad.
Dr. George Haines, Medford’s first resident physician and one of its most prominent citizens during the first half of the nineteenth century, built this house in 1826.  According to local oral tradition, Haines, who was also a Quaker, abolitionist, and advocate for the cause of temperance, used this house as a safe haven for runaway slaves. This succeeding owner of the house, Dr. Andrew E. Budd, another physician, continued its role in the Underground Railroad. Local oral tradition identified the rear of the house as the place where the fugitive slaves were hidden, a story seemingly confirmed by a secret room underneath the kitchen in the rear of the house that was recently discovered during renovation of the house.