Hopewell Forge Mansion
Elizabeth Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Built c. 1740 by Peter Grubb, pioneer ironmaster at nearby Cornwall Furnace, and named for the Upper and Lower Hopewell Forges located on Hammer Creek near the house. Remnants of the forge dams may still be seen in the creek.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Around 1740, ironmaster Peter Grubb built this house amid the forges and furnaces that made Pennsylvania a colonial iron powerhouse. Grubb had opened the nearby Cornwall Furnace, tapping the region's rich ore, while the Upper and Lower Hopewell Forges hammered pig iron into usable bar iron along Hammer Creek. The dams that once powered those forges can still be traced in the water below the mansion.
Why it matters
The Grubb ironworks helped make colonial Pennsylvania a leading iron producer, feeding an industry that would later arm the Revolution and anchor American manufacturing.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the middle of the 1700s, the hills of Lancaster County held a resource as valuable as good farmland: iron. Rich deposits of ore, vast stands of timber to make charcoal, and fast-running creeks to power machinery came together in this corner of Pennsylvania to create one of the most important early iron-producing regions in the American colonies.
Ironmaking in that era was a landscape unto itself. A furnace smelted ore into crude 'pig iron,' and forges then hammered that brittle metal into tougher, more useful bar iron. Around these works grew whole communities — the ironmaster and his family, the founders and forgemen, woodcutters and haulers — often clustered into self-contained 'iron plantations' set deep in the countryside.
Britain officially wanted its colonies to supply raw materials and buy finished goods, but the iron country of Pennsylvania was already building real industrial capacity. In these wooded valleys, colonial America was quietly learning to make the metal a growing society could not do without.
People & events
This mansion was built around 1740 by Peter Grubb, remembered as a pioneer ironmaster and the man behind the nearby Cornwall Furnace. Grubb had recognized the value of the region's ore, and his furnace tapped into it — the beginning of an ironmaking enterprise that would leave a deep mark on the area.
The house took its name, Hopewell Forge Mansion, from the Upper and Lower Hopewell Forges on Hammer Creek nearby. Where the furnace produced raw iron, these forges did the next stage of the work, hammering pig iron into usable bar iron. The very name of the creek — Hammer Creek — carries the memory of that pounding, water-driven labor.
To build a substantial mansion here was to place the ironmaster's home at the center of the whole operation, within reach of furnace and forge alike. It was the residence of a man whose fortunes rose and fell with fire, ore, and running water.
Its place in the American story
The Grubb ironworks were part of what made colonial Pennsylvania a leading iron producer, and that mattered far beyond one family or one valley. Iron was the indispensable material of the age — tools, hardware, implements, and, in time, the weapons of war all depended on it.
An ironmaking region like this one gave the American colonies a homegrown industrial base at a time when such capacity was rare and strategically important. The metal produced in furnaces and forges across Pennsylvania helped equip a growing society and, later, would help supply the cause of American independence.
The broader iron industry that took root in places like this became a foundation of American manufacturing. Long before the great steel age, the ironmasters of the colonial backcountry were proving that the New World could not only farm and trade but make the hard materials of nationhood for itself.
If you visit
The most evocative detail on this marker is an invitation to look closely at the creek. The inscription notes that remnants of the old forge dams can still be seen in Hammer Creek — so when you visit, watch the water for traces of the stonework that once channeled its power into the forges.
Those faint remains are the real reward here. They turn a quiet stream into a piece of industrial history, letting you stand where water was once harnessed to hammer iron into shape. Picture the noise and heat of a working forge set against the green calm you find today, and the contrast tells the whole story.
The mansion itself anchors the scene as the home of the ironmaster who started it all. On a road trip through Lancaster County's iron country, this site pairs naturally with the broader story of Cornwall Furnace and the region's early industry — a landscape where American manufacturing has some of its deepest colonial roots.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Peter Grubb
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Peter Grubb's Upper Hopewell Iron Forge
Elizabeth Township, PA
In the wooded hills of Lancaster County, ironmaster Peter Grubb raised this forge in 1742, part of the network of charcoal-fired "iron plantations" that made colonial Pennsylvania one of the largest iron producers in the British Empire. At an upper forge like this one, workers refined brittle pig iron under water-powered hammers into tough, malleable wrought iron — the bar stock a young country needed for tools, hardware, and horseshoes. The Grubb family's ironworks grew into one of the region's great iron dynasties, and this forge kept its hammers ringing until 1803, through the Revolution and into the early Republic. Long after the fires went cold, the ground was set aside as a wildlife sanctuary and place of rest in memory of Richard "Dick" Eugene Connelly.
Grubb's First Forge
Cornwall, PA · est. 1967
Around 1735, Peter Grubb began working iron just north of here, launching an enterprise that would help make Pennsylvania a colonial iron powerhouse. He relied on the Catalan-type forge—a bloomery method with roots in tenth-century Spain—to draw usable iron from ore. Grubb's early efforts seeded the great Cornwall ironworks that followed.
Cornwall Banks
Cornwall, PA · est. 1947
The Cornwall Banks were among the richest iron deposits in the world and the oldest continuously worked mine in the New World, yielding ore for more than two centuries. From colonial furnaces that helped arm the Revolution to the industrial age, this Lebanon County hillside fed a steady stream of Pennsylvania iron — long described as the greatest such ore body east of Lake Superior.
Cornwall Furnace
Cornwall, PA · est. 1948
Peter Grubb raised this charcoal-fired iron furnace in 1742, tapping the rich ore of the Cornwall hills to smelt pig iron in an age when American industry was still in its infancy. Under later owners—most famously the Coleman family—the works ran for more than 140 years, outlasting nearly every one of its colonial-era rivals. Preserved as a state historic site, it survives as the best intact example of an early Pennsylvania ironmaking plantation.