Hidden in Plain Sight

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First published in the March 2025 Colerain Courier Newsletter

This month's article covers the wooden front section of Colerain Forges Mansion that I briefly mentioned in the last article. I commented about how the wooden section belonged to Samuel Marshall, and would like to share the findings that led me to that conclusion. 

The 1798 direct tax did not list the house as being on the property. About 1800, Samuel Marshall married his wife, Sarah. It would have been appropriate to build a home for his new wife. In the Lancaster Intelligencer and Journal, the 1801 advertisement about the property listed a “framed dwelling house 28 feet square, neatly finished.” Specifics to construction and the size is not something that you find very often in newspaper advertisements of the period. 

The question for me was: Where did this house sit on the property?

One day while sitting in my car looking at the mansion, I became curious and decided to measure the wooden section of the house. I pulled out my tape measure and measured from corner to corner on the side and from corner to the left side of the front door, where the brick addition was added. The section measured 28’x28’. Having a background in historical woodworking, I went into the basement and examined the framing underneath the house. I found that it is post and beam construction. This would have been the framing method of the period.

After discovering the construction of the wooden section of the house was post and beam, next I wanted to find exposed nails to help determine the time period. I located exposed nails in the basement and attic space. In the basement, holding some of the framing together, are hand forged nails with large rose heads. Hand forged nails are completely made one at a time by a blacksmith using special tools to help with shaping the head after forging out the shank of the nail on the anvil. In the attic space, there is still original flooring. I was able to wiggle out a nail of one of the floorboards and examine it. The nail was a machine- made nail with a hand forged head. Nail-making machines started to appear in the 1790s, but were not able to put heads on them until 1810-1820. Machine-made nails, one by one, would be placed in a nail header that pinched the shank that would allow blacksmiths to hammer a head on the nail. Nails of this kind of manufacture would have been what was available at the time of construction of this section of the mansion.

Further, I observed that the basement wall that is between the brick section and the wooden section does have a doorway and exterior windows in that wall that would suggest to me that it was at one time an exterior wall. I am certain that the living areas of the wooden section would have been remodeled to suit any future residents, possibly removing any of Samuel Marshall’s interior construction. Colerain Forges was part of the Lyon, Shorb, and Company. This company in the 1830s and 1840s seemed to undergo a company-wide growth.

A few of the company's ironmasters' homes were built in the area, such as the Shorb Mansion, now known as Forest Manor in Warriors Mark, and the Lyon Mansion at Pennsylvania Furnace. At the same time, the brick portion and remodeling may have been done to create the Colerain Forges Mansion we are familiar with today.