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.
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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.