Hannover Furnace is important to the Weast story because this is where Thomas, Morgan, Levi, Daniel, and Henry worked according to the 1850 Census records. This is also where many of the marriages and births were noted during this time.
The following has been excerpted from various sources:
Hanover Furnace, also known as Hanover Iron-Works, was begun in 1791. The location capitalized on several important natural features: a quick-running stream, the North Branch of the Rancocas Creek; an excellent supply of timber; and an abundance of bog iron. It was a few miles east of Browns Mills and just west of Hartshorne’s Mill.
Joseph Ridgway had acquired a large tract of land in the western portion of Northampton Township (the land was later in Pemberton Township). From the deeds, it is evident that Hanover Furnace was built between 1791 and 1792.
In 1808 there were several changes in the partnership. Three-quarters of the company was owned by the Howell Family of Philadelphia and the other quarter share belonged to John Lacey. Benjamin Jones of Philadelphia, a noted ironmonger, had married Mary A. Howell, a granddaughter of Samuel Howell. Under Samuel Howell’s will, he bequeathed one-half part of Hanover Furnace and Mount Misery Saw Mill Tract to Mary Jones. On March 22, 1811, Jones bought out Thomas R. Howell and later the same year he bought out John Lacey giving him full control of the company.
The Hanover Tract included upwards of one thousand acres when Benjamin Jones took it over. It was a site well-located for an iron-smelting furnace and Jones took full advantage of its natural features. The North Branch formed a broad embayment at the site and it was easily dammed giving the Furnace an excellent water supply. On the north side of the millpond was a sloping bluff where Jones decided to build his mansion. The location afforded him a pleasant view of the total operation. During its peak days of operation, Hanover boasted a population of about 450 persons.
Most of the iron ore was dug at a site just north of the Furnace known as Cranberry Hall. A typical ironstone layer ran from 18 inches to 2 feet in thickness. Throughout the New Jersey lowlands, there are large sections underlain with distinctly ferruginous strata. Underground waters, percolating through the layers, take into solution considerable iron oxide, which, as it rises to the surface, is deposited in swamp beds and along waterways as a reddish sludge. When the sludge is dug up and permitted to dry out, it becomes a solid conglomerate which is called bog-ore, ready for the furnace. Hanover Furnace chiefly produced pig iron, fireplace backs, stoves, and water pipes.
During the War of 1812, the furnace at Hanover was actively engaged in casting cannon balls, shells, and cannon for the Federal Government. In 1814, according to contemporary sources and reports made within fifty years of that date, Hanover Furnace was used to cast several twenty-four pound cannons for use on the ships that fought the Algerian pirates. (Attempts to positively prove these accounts in the twentieth century have not been productive.) According to reports at the time, the guns were test-fired in the woods which accounted for the cannon balls that were found in the forest around the Furnace.
Benjamin Jones purchased a tract of land from John Black in May 1827, and a few years later built the Mary Ann Forge on Mount Misery Run about three miles southeast of New Lisbon. Its two hammers were supplied with pig iron from the Hanover Furnace. To better understand the differences between forges and furnaces, you can read the excerpt from Forges and Furnaces Collection Introduction.
Benjamin Jones was instrumental in establishing the road from Hanover to the “Old Monmouth Road,” which was long known as the “Gun Road.” After the war, large quantities of iron pipe were made for the Philadelphia Water Works and were, in the early days, either carted to the landing at Florence and transported by boat to Philadelphia or hauled by mule teams of the “Great Road” to Philadelphia. Later, through the energy of Benjamin Jones, a railroad was constructed from Kinkora (outskirts of Roebling before it existed) to New Lisbon.
Benjamin Jones operated Hanover Furnace until January 29, 1846. On that date, he sold the entire estate for $30,000 to his two sons, Samuel H. and Richard Jones, who continued the business under the name R. and S.H. Jones. Richard Jones left the business in 1850 when he went to Newark and organized the New Jersey Exploration and Mining Company. Although the furnace shut down in 1855, Samuel H. Jones remained in business at Hanover Furnace until 1864. In 1858, W.F. Mayer, a writer for The Atlantic Monthly visited Hanover Furnace and vividly described his experiences:
Hanover, too, in its day of pride, furnished many a city with its iron tubes for water and for gas, many a factory and workshop with its castings, and many a farmer with his tools; but the glow of the furnace is quenched forever now. The slowly gathering ferruginous deposits have been exhausted, and three years have elapsed since the furnace-fires were lighted. The blackened shell of the building stands in cold decrepitude, a melancholy vestige of usefulness outlived. In consequence of the stoppage of the works, Hanover has lost seven-eighths of its population, and only about fifty inhabitants remain in the white cottages grouped about the Big House, who are employed in agricultural labors and occupations connected with the forest. Yet in this solitary nook, the elegances and the tastes of the most cultivated society are to be found. The Big House, surrounded by its well-trimmed gardens sloping down to the broad Rancocas, with its comfortable apartments, and the diversified prospect which it commands, offers a resting place which, although deep in the genuine forest, combines urban refinement with the quiet and seclusion of country life.
About 1850, Richard Jones went to Newark and organized the New Jersey Exploration and Mining Company, later the New Jersey Zinc Company. In I851 (or 1853 or 1855), he moved to Florence where he built a furnace (the Florence Iron Works), using some of the old Hanover Furnace equipment in the new plant. Samuel H. Jones remained at Hanover Furnace. In 1864 Richard Jones tried to unsuccessfully to sell his interest in the company to R.D. Woods & Company, and as a result, the ironworks shut down. Richard retired to Mt Holly, where he died sometime in 1890.
Obituary Notice: Florence (January 1, 1904) – Morgan Weast Sr., died on New Year’s day, after a prolonged illness. He was a moulder by trade, and 85 years of age. Many years ago, when Richard Jones removed his foundry from Hanover to this place, he came here, too, and remained until his death.
The village at Hanover, which remained after the furnace closed down, was destroyed by fire on April 9, 1900. Fourteen houses were burned to the ground when a forest fire swept through the area. The slag banks that remained were utilized by Ft. Dix, which acquired the land in 1917, for building roads.
No particular attention was paid to the furnace location until the expansion of Fort Dix in 1941. When Fort Dix expanded they took Hanover Furnace as part of the enlargement of the base. The Burlington County Historical Society petitioned the Army officials to set aside a two-acre site marking the location of Hanover Furnace and enclose it. It was preserved for a while, but as the army base grew larger the site was flooded and obliterated.
New Jersey Folklore
Whenever working people gather together in a community and have numbers of routine tasks, they find ways to pass the time pleasantly. With increased urbanization, one common pastime has largely disappeared, but at Hanover Furnace in the mid-nineteenth century storytelling was a popular way to spend the limited leisure time to enliven otherwise routine duties. The oral tradition of storytelling still flourishes in rural sections of the United States, but Burlington County has only memories of what was once a rich collection of folklore indigenous to this region. Fortunately, Herbert Halpert, noted American folklorist, collected both folksongs and stories common to Burlington County during the 1930’s and 1940’s.
One of the earliest recorded versions of the Jersey Devil folktale was recorded by Mayer in his 1859 article “In the Pines:’ He heard it on his visit to Hanover Furnace:
There lived, in the year 1735, in the township of Burlington, a woman. Her name was Leeds, and she was shrewdly suspected of a little amateur witchcraft. Be that as it may, it is well established, that, one stormy, gusty night, when the wind was howling in turret and tree, Mother Leeds gave birth to a son, whose father could have been no other than the Prince of Darkness. No sooner did he see the light than he assumed the form of a fiend, with a horse’s head, wings of bat, and a serpent’s tail. The first thought of the newborn Caliban was to fall foul of his mother, whom he scratched and be pommelled soundly, and then flew through the window out into the village where he played mischief generally. Little children he devoured, maidens he abused, young men he mauled and battered; and it was many days before a holy man succeeded in repeating the enchantment of Prospera. At length, however, Leed’s devil was laid – but only for one hundred years.
During an entire century, the memory of that awful monster was preserved, and, as 1835 drew nigh, the citizens of Burlington and the Pines looked trembling/y for his rising. Strange to say, however, no one but Hannah Butler (a resident of the Hanover Furnace area) has had a personal interview with the fiend; though, since 1835, he has frequently been heard howling and screaming in the forest at night … Hannah Butler saw the devil, one stormy night, long ago; though some skeptical individuals affirm, that very possibly she may have been under the influence of liquid jersey lightning, to invest a pine-stump, or, possibly a belated bear, with diabolical attributes and a Satanic voice.
Photographs of Hanover Furnace Site
Just outside of Pemberton you can find the location of Hanover Furnace which is just inside the fence of Fort Dix. On a recent map it looks like it is near the intersection of Pepper & Range Road.
Here are a set of pictures taken on July 9, 2004:
Hanover Furnace Sign
Density of Forest Near Site
Hanover Lake
Bog Near Site
Historical Papers – More Research Required
There are historical papers located in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) regarding the Jones family papers, including specific documents related to Hanover Furnace. What would be interesting to this group is any mention of the Weast who worked there and other historical information. It is possible that within these collections, those who worked at the ironworks are listed, what their wages were, and what they purchased from the company store.
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania – Collection 212, Forges and Furnaces Collection, 1727-1921, 158 boxes, 955 volumes, 271.2 linear feet
Hanover Furnace and Mary Ann Forge (17 vols.), Jones Ironwork
Hanover Furnace and Mary Ann Forge books are part of the Jones family papers, owners of the furnace and forge which was located in Pemberton Township, at Bridgewater in Burlington County, New Jersey. It was built in 1791 on Rancocas Creek. Benjamin Jones (1761-1849) had married Mary Howell, a descendant of one of the founders of Hanover Furnace, in 1797. By 1811, Jones had acquired full control of the furnace, just as it reached its full peak during the War of 1812, when both cannon and cannon balls were made there. During the 1820s, Jones suffered bankruptcy, but by 1826 he had regained control of Hanover Furnace. In the next few years he acquired a share in Gloucester Furnace in Atlantic County, and also built Mary Ann Forge to refine Hanover pig iron. Hanover Furnace is said to have made much of the pipe used in Philadelphia’s early water system. The furnace closed in 1864.
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania – Collection 2037, Jones and Taylor Family Papers, 1737-1971 (bulk 1830-1919), 10 boxes, 42 vols., 8.6 lin. feet
Series 1. Benjamin Jones, 1802-1877 (Boxes 1-2)
a. Correspondence, 1831-1849.
Letters in this subseries are primarily incoming and relate to business matters. A large portion of the family correspondence is from Richard, one of Benjamin’s younger sons, regarding bonds, railroads, and the transfer of funds. Items related to the Hanover Furnace and Mary Ann Forge in Burlington County, New Jersey, are also included, as is information on the Jones and Howell Philadelphia Iron Works. Richard wrote to his father about the “Troublous nature of the times.” He was concerned about the business and wanted to curtail expenses by closing the business. Many letters contain pricing information, product information, and worries about the economy during times of depression. There are many letters from debtors to Benjamin Jones asking for extensions on payments that are coming due. Correspondence from business associates relates to land speculation in western Pennsylvania. These letters are arranged chronologically, with letters from his sons Richard and Andrew filed separately.