Living with antiques: Charming Forge Mansion near Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania

The gently rolling hills of Berks County in central Pennsylvania paint a picturesque landscape. They also hold iron ore and support ample tree growth, respectively the raw material and source of fuel necessary for making iron. (1) By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania's iron industry created a network of iron masters and investors who used their wealth in part to build and furnish beautiful, sometimes imposing homesteads, often called plantations. The stately qualities of an iron masters house, usually located near the furnace or forge, symbolized the material successes of the heavily capitalized and sometimes risky iron industry. Charming Forge (Fig. 1), near the small settlement of Womelsdorf about fifteen miles west of Reading, testifies to the business acumen and accomplishments of its original owner George Ege and to the skills of many regional artisans. Now popularly called Charming Forge Mansion, it also makes an academic statement in the otherwise pastoral setting, quite distant from any urbanized communities.

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The history of the property begins in 1748, when John George Nikoll, a hammersmith, or iron forger, by trade, and Michael Miller, yeoman, of Warwick and Tulpehocken townships, respectively, bought sixty-one acres along the Tulpehocken Creek. A second purchase two years later added eighty-eight acres across the creek. By 1751 the two partners had erected a water-powered ironworks, which they named Tulpehocken Eisenhammer [Iron Forge]. The high costs of operating an ironworks often resulted in mortgages, leases, and sales of partial interests to generate funds, and Tulpehocken Eisenhammer was no exception. Four other individuals acquired varying interests in the property before 1760, when it was sold to Michael Gross and the flamboyant entrepreneur Henry William Stiegel (b. 1729). Stiegel renamed it Charming Forge, inspired perhaps by the natural endowments of the area. Another series of ownership changes ensued, sparked in part by Stiegel's impending bankruptcy.

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Germantown-born George Ege was introduced as a teenager to the iron industry by Stiegel, who married George's aunt Elizabeth Holtz (c. 1735-1782). Ege eventually became ironmaster at the Mary Ann Furnace in York County and began managing Charming Forge in the early 1770s. In 1774 he acquired a 25 percent interest in the property and by 1784, he owned it outright. Ege brought stability and longevity to the business, which he owned until his death in 1829, although he too suffered financial reversals late in life that caused him to assign portions of his property to family members and associates. (2) Ege's vision for the ironworks included a stately house, which he built for himself on a hillside facing south and toward the forge. Account books for Charming Forge document purchases of house-building materials and labor charges from 1784 through 1786. In January 1786 Ege paid Robert Coleman (1748-1825) forty-one pounds for cast-iron stoves, which signals the near completion of the house. (3) At the time Coleman owned Elizabeth Furnace, another property formerly owned by Stiegel, in Brickerville, about fifteen miles south of Womelsdorf. Furnaces produced pig iron, which was smelted from iron ore and cast into ingots or stove plates, kettles, and other implements. Ege's refinery forge, in contrast, processed brittle pig iron into bars of forged, or tempered, iron by repeatedly heating it in a hearth and hammering it with water-driven hammers. This bar iron was sold to blacksmiths for further manufacturing into tools, cooking implements, hinges, and other useful products. (4)

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Following Ege's death the forge and mansion changed hands several times. An inventory taken in 1855, when the property was sold to Andrew Taylor (d. 1866) and his two sons William and Benjamin, is one of the few early records that illuminate how the house was furnished and used. The inventory lists items such as a set of mahogany chairs, a marble-topped table, a large looking glass, and a brass eight-day clock, along with lots of beds and bedding, sausage-making and cooking equipment, and an ironing table, suggesting that the mansion probably retained some of its earlier refinements but now housed workers. (5) In January 1864 the garret was finished to create four additional bedrooms. The Taylors operated the forge until the late 1880s, but it and other forge-related structures were subsequently demolished, leaving little or no evidence along the creek. Half shares of the house were transferred to the John Sallade family in 1916 and 1921, but upon assuming complete ownership, the Sallades seemingly ceased using it as a year-round residence, making few concessions to modernization and thus preserving almost all of the original fabric. In 1993 the present owners acquired the remarkably well-preserved house and began to restore it. Restoration carefully followed original evidence and incorporated creative solutions that minimize the intrusions of modern utilities, allowing the house to express its late eighteenth-century qualities.