First of all, I want to express my appreciation to everyone who has checked out the podcast so far! I genuinely had my doubts about it, despite what my friends said, but it's been very reassuring to get so much positive feedback. I anticipate uploading the next episode tomorrow, and it's my hope that I will have all of 'season one' (that is, the blog posts from 2018) recorded and uploaded by the end of May.
Meanwhile, for this week's quest we're going to visit an allegedly haunted house in Berks County. I say 'allegedly' mostly because I can't verify either way, but the stories persist.
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| The marker stands at the intersection of Conrad Weiser Parkway (US 422) and North River Road |
When it was first established in 1749, what's now known as Charming Forge was called the Tulpehocken Eisenhammer, with that second word being Pennsylvania Dutch for 'iron forge.' In those days it was in Lancaster County, as Berks wasn't formed into a county of its own until 1752. Its owners were John George Nikoll and Michael Miller, but in 1757 the property was handed off to Michael Reis and Garrett Brenner. It's not clear whether these gentlemen purchased the property or if they were relatives who inherited it. What is known for sure is that around the same time, land adjacent to the eisenhammer was being bought up by a man who called himself Baron Stiegel.
His real name was either Henry William Stiegel or William Henry Stiegel; I've seen it written both ways, so I don't know which is correct. As far as I can tell, he wasn't actually a baron and there doesn't seem to be any record for why he decided to call himself that. We know that in 1763 he bought the eisenhammer, though he sold half of it to the Stedman brothers, Charles and Alexander. Alexander sold his interest to Charles in 1770, which was the first time the property was identified as Charming Forge in official documentation.
During this heyday of the forge, Charming Forge was effectively a little village unto itself. There was the forge, of course, plus a blacksmith shop, cottages for the workers, an office, a store, two mills, and a boarding house. It's believed, although unconfirmed, that this may have been where cannon ammunition for the American Revolution was manufactured. One of the mills was called a slitting mill, which cut the iron into strips to make small items like nails; this required a lot of water power, so George Ege recruited 34 Hessian soldiers, prisoners of war, to carve a channel to bring water from the Tulpehocken Creek into the property. Unlike most of the village structures, the channel survives to this day. The property later also included a sawmill and the Womelsdorf Electric Company.
George Ege was, at one time, the biggest landowner in Berks County. He served on the Pennsylvania General Assembly and was also an associate judge. Like Baron Stiegel, he ran into some financial difficulties in the early 1800s; unlike the Baron, however, he was able to retain ownership of his estate despite being in debt for $300,000. (That would be a lot even today, but back then it was a king's ransom.) After his death in 1830, the Charming Forge property passed through various hands over the next few decades.
In the 1910s it was purchased by the Sallade family, who owned it for most of the 20th century. Two sisters, Pearl Sallade Sensenig and Joan Sallade Everline, inherited the property jointly and would occasionally provide tours in the 1980s to history enthusiasts. I'm unclear as to who owns it currently; real estate websites indicate that it isn't on the market, though it was listed for sale as lately as 2018. It's almost certainly private property, though.
The mansion house, as beautiful as it is, barely hints at its storied past. As I said, it's rumored to be extremely haunted. One of the ghosts is allegedly that of Baron Stiegel himself, who is said to have died in the house while in his son-in-law's care; visitors have claimed to hear him stomping his boots. Another story is that of a Native American man who visited the property during the mansion's construction, and warned the owners that it was being built on Native burial ground. This actually does have some basis in history, because old forge records confirm that a number of human bones were discovered during excavation on the property. The story claims that when his warnings were mocked, the visiting Native placed a "Black Eagle" curse on Charming Forge. I have no idea what that means, to be honest, but just seconds later the Native was killed when a piece of ironmaking equipment malfunctioned and struck him in the head. So it's believed that he too haunts the grounds.
But I'll leave you with the saddest of the ghost stories, which is said to explain why the second story's northwestern room remains uninhabitable to this day. It's said that George Ege had a ward, a pretty young woman named Von Neida. She and a forge clerk, whose name is not recorded, fell in love and asked for George's permission to get married. He wasn't opposed, but he didn't think the clerk made enough money to provide her with a good home, so he urged his employee to go out and seek his fortune. According to the story, he found it, though no one knows exactly what he did or where he went to get it. He was riding back to the mansion, "with a heart full of love and saddlebags full of money," in the words of eastern Pennsylvania's ghost story master, Charles Adams. As he came in view of the house, he could see Von Neida on the front porch, waving her handkerchief in greeting, and he rose up in his stirrups to wave back. But this startled his horse, and the animal reared up and threw the clerk from the saddle. He was killed in the accident. His ghost is said to still haunt the road to the mansion, unable to find his way past the spot where he died. Meanwhile, that northwestern room on the second floor was Von Neida's bedroom, and no one can stay in that room because she is still there, forever grieving for her lost love.
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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