Colerain Forges Mansion

On the west side of Route 45, three quarters of a mile south of Franklinville, a white T-shaped house stands in a grove of old trees on a bend of Spruce Creek. It was the ironmaster's mansion of Colerain Forges, and the nomination calls it the only surviving resource of the forge operation that once stood across the road.

The nomination says three forges were built near Spruce Creek in the 1810s: Upper and Lower Sligo, in 1810 and 1814, by Patton and Roach, and Marshall's, by Samuel Marshall. Africa's 1883 county history puts Marshall's start earlier; the two sources disagree on the year. Between 1819 and 1826 John Lyon and Robert T. Stewart, owners of Pennsylvania Furnace, consolidated them under the name Colerain Forges. In 1831 the partners acquired Huntingdon Furnace, and the nomination says Colerain Forge was built to process the iron that furnace produced. David Stewart managed the forges and lived in the mansion; Africa says he moved to Coleraine Forges in 1831 and died there in May 1869, aged seventy-seven. Thomas S. Lyon ran the operation after him until the last forge closed in 1874.

Africa puts the output of blooms from February 28, 1828, to February 28, 1860, at 29,661 tons. The nomination says the manufacturers' censuses of 1850 and 1860 valued a year's production at more than $60,000, $13,000 to $18,000 above the pig iron made at Huntingdon Furnace or Pennsylvania Furnace individually.

The house was built in four sections of three materials. The nomination says the plastered stone middle section is the oldest and probably dates from the late 1700s; the frame east portion of the front dates to the 1830s, the brick west portion to the 1840s, and a board-and-batten rear section probably to the 1860s or 1870s. A stone outbuilding east of the house, 18 by 28 feet, is counted as contributing. In 1968 architecture students from Carnegie-Mellon University drew the house to Historic American Buildings Survey standards.

The nomination, prepared in July 1989 and received by the National Park Service in February 1990, put the mansion forward under the Industrial Resources of Huntingdon County listing for its association with the local iron industry and as an example of Federal architecture, with a period of significance of 1810 to 1874. When Africa wrote in 1883, two of David Stewart's daughters, Catherine W. and Margaret, still occupied the homestead at Coleraine.

Checked 2026-09-05 · National Register of Historic Places nomination, read in full

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