HistoricSiteMarkers
American RevolutionEarly Republic

Rock Ford

Lancaster, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

Name of Colonial mansion of Edward Hand, Adjutant General of the Continental Army, and notable Lancaster physician. George Washington was entertained here in 1791. The old mansion is about half a mile to the southeast.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

Rock Ford was the Georgian mansion of Edward Hand, an Irish-born Lancaster physician who rose to serve as Adjutant General of the Continental Army under George Washington. After the Revolution he settled into this home along the Conestoga, and in 1791 he welcomed President Washington himself as a guest. The mansion survives about half a mile to the southeast.

Why it matters

It preserves the world of the Revolutionary officer class who, having won independence, became the civic leaders of the new republic.

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Related people

  • · Edward Hand
  • · George Washington

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

George Ross

Lancaster, PA · est. 1950

George Ross settled at Lancaster around 1751 and became a soldier, jurist, and ardent patriot in the cause of American independence. As a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The site of his country house, nine blocks north on Ross Street, is now marked by a monument; Ross died in 1779, in the midst of the Revolution he helped launch.

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

Lancaster, PA · est. 1975

Founded in 1730, this Lancaster congregation stood at the heart of a bustling colonial town where the Pennsylvania frontier met the settled east. Its early building even hosted a 1762 Indian treaty council, a reminder that diplomacy with Native nations often unfolded in the plainest of civic spaces. The stone church dedicated in 1766 still guards the graves of two Pennsylvania statesmen of the Revolutionary era, Thomas Wharton and Governor Thomas Mifflin.

Shippen House

Lancaster, PA · est. 1950

Edward Shippen was one of colonial Lancaster's leading citizens, a lawyer and judge who chaired the local Committee of Observation as the Revolution approached. His home stood here for three decades in the mid-1700s, an era when Lancaster was among the largest inland towns in the colonies. He is remembered too as grandfather of Peggy Shippen, who married Benedict Arnold and became entangled in the most infamous treason of the war.

First Presbyterian Church

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This Lancaster congregation traces its roots to 1742, completing its first building here in 1770 with the current edifice dedicated in 1851. Its first regular pastor, the Rev. John D. Woodhull, was a Revolutionary patriot, and among its members was James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States. The church's long life spans the colonial era, the Revolution, and the antebellum decades of national growth.