Pottsgrove Manor in Pottstown, PA

Pottsgrove Manor
100 West King Street
Pottstown, PA 19464-6318
(610) 326-4014

Blessed with iron ore deposits, vast forests that provided charcoal, abundant coal beds for fuel, limestone for use as flux and streams for water power, Pennsylvania was the ironmaking center of America for more than a century. From tools for blacksmiths and wheel rims for carriages, to steam locomotives and iron rails, iron products from Pennsylvania played a leading role in the development of the English colonies and the United States well into the nineteenth century.

Iron plantations based on charcoal-fueled furnaces were the centers of iron manufacturing. Rural iron plantations were large complexes of production facilities including housing for workers, an ironmaster’s mansion, a village store, forests and often encompassed land containing iron ore deposits. This system of charcoal furnace plantations peaked during the 1830s.

Thomas Potts started his family’s iron empire by becoming manager of the Colebrookdale Furnace in the Schuylkill River Valley. Established about 1720, it was the first blast furnace in Pennsylvania. In 1725 Thomas Potts leased the furnace and became its resident manager. While leasing Colebrookdale Furnace he earned enough money to buy a two-thirds share in the furnace and in 1734 his son John became a founder there. John Potts’s next stroke of good fortune came in 1745, when he and his wife received from his mother-in-law a 50% share in Warwick Furnace, a sizable operation that consumed 240 acres of forest timber annually.

John Potts built an empire around the productive Warwick Furnace, using it to supply pig iron to refinery forges and using the profits to buy or build his own forges, all located in Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill River Valley. One of them was called Mount Joy Forge, although the name Valley Forge was also used. He erected a mansion at Mount Joy Forge; that residence became George Washington’s headquarters during the Continental Army’s winter encampment at Valley Forge in 1777-1778.

In 1752 John Potts established the iron plantation of Pottsgrove, where he built a mansion house and refinery forge and laid out a village in a grid pattern. He made Pottsgrove his family seat and the residential and commercial center for the forge. Warwick Furnace produced pig iron that supplied the refinery forge at Pottsgrove and his other forges in southeastern Pennsylvania.

John Potts’s oldest son, Thomas, inherited the plantation in 1768, and held onto it until 1783, when he sold it. The subsequent 150 years or so brought a myriad of owners and uses of the property. In 1820 the Georgian-style home was remodeled in the Greek Revival style, which was popular at the time. After the Civil War, the home was turned it into a hotel. By the 1920’s, it had been converted to a multiple family residence. During the Great Depression it was abandoned and was inhabited by homeless and itinerant people.

The Pottstown Historical Society purchased the Pottsgrove Manor along with four acres of land in 1939. From that time until the present the mansion has been in public hands and has undergone a couple of major restorations. Under the full jurisdiction of Montgomery County since 1988, the home has been open to the public on a nearly continual basis since September, 1991.

The Pottstown Historical Society owns John Potts’ personal ledger, and that manuscript has been used to guide the furnishing of the mansion’s interior. Potts carefully recorded details of the home’s construction, materials and craftsmen, and left a room-by-room probate inventory of nearly all furnishings. The home’s collection of artifacts is comprised primarily of authentic 18th and 19th century pieces, and the acquisition of those pieces was guided by the John Potts’ ledger. The homes furnishings are on loan from various sources, including the Pottstown Historical Society, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and several private collections. Some of Pottsgrove Manor’s original antiquities are part of the collection housed at the du Pont familiy’s Winterthur Museum in Delaware.

The top picture shows the front side of Pottsgrove Manor, which faces the Schuylkill River. The manor home was constructed in a restrained early Georgian style. I very briefly explained what Georgian style architecture was in the article about the Peter Wentz Farmstead. The second photo shows the west side, outside of which there is a Colonial Revival garden. The garden contains native plant species and imports typical of 18th century customs.

You can find antique cast iron toys on my Vintage Toys website.