At first glance, it does not look like much. In the woods north of Brickerville, where Segloch Run slips through the Furnace Hills and the slopes rise toward Cannon Hill, a long depression cuts through the forest floor. Leaves collect in it. Trees lean across it. Roots have broken into its edges. In places, erosion and time have softened its shape so thoroughly that a casual hiker might walk past without realizing anything unusual is there.
But this old trench is not a natural ravine. It is the Hessian Ditch, a Revolutionary War-era canal dug by captured enemy soldiers to increase the power of Elizabeth Furnace, one of Lancaster County’s most important ironworks.
It is a rare kind of historic site. There is no grand monument, no reconstructed battlefield, no stone marker demanding attention. Instead, the Hessian Ditch survives as a scar in the landscape, a 1.3-mile-long reminder of war, industry, labor, and survival.
To understand why anyone would dig such a ditch through the Furnace Hills, you first have to understand the problem facing Elizabeth Furnace.
The furnace began in the mid-1700s, when John Jacob Huber established an iron operation in the hills north of what is now Brickerville. Henry William Stiegel, later remembered as Baron Stiegel, became connected to the furnace through both marriage and business. But by the time of the Revolutionary War, Elizabeth Furnace was under the control of Robert Coleman, an ambitious and practical ironmaster who leased the property in 1776.
Coleman would eventually become one of Pennsylvania’s wealthiest men, but during the war his concerns were more immediate. The Continental Army needed iron. Furnaces like Elizabeth helped produce the metal goods that supported the American war effort, including shot and other military supplies. Increased production meant increased demand on the furnace’s machinery, and that machinery depended heavily on waterpower.
At Elizabeth Furnace, water from the nearby Furnace Run helped drive the blast machinery that forced air into the furnace. That blast was essential. More air meant a hotter fire, and a hotter fire meant better and more efficient iron production. The difficulty was that Furnace Run did not always provide enough water, especially during drier periods of late summer and fall.
Nearby Segloch Run carried a stronger flow. Coleman’s solution was simple in concept but difficult to execute: divert water westward from Segloch Run toward Furnace Run and the furnace works. To do that, workers would need to cut a channel through the landscape, following the base of Cannon Hill and allowing gravity to carry water where it was needed.
The result was the Hessian Ditch.
Historic descriptions generally place the ditch at about 1.3 miles long. It was originally about six feet wide and six feet deep, tracing a broad, uneven U shape around the contours of Cannon Hill. It was not a decorative canal. It was a work trench, dug for function. A dam or water-control structure on Segloch Run would have fed water into the channel. From there, the ditch carried the stream’s flow along the hillside toward Elizabeth Furnace.
The setting made the work especially difficult. The ditch was cut into the side of Cannon Hill, with excavated stone and rubble piled along the downhill side to help shape and support the channel. Large rocks had to be split and moved. Later descriptions mention the use of hand tools such as picks, shovels, sledgehammers, and chisels. This was not a quick scrape across soft soil. It was heavy labor through a wooded, rocky hillside.
The men who did much of that work were Hessian prisoners of war.
During the Revolutionary War, Britain hired large numbers of German auxiliary troops, many from Hesse and nearby German states, to fight alongside British forces in North America. They are often called mercenaries, though the more precise term is auxiliaries, since they were hired as organized military units under their own officers rather than as individual soldiers of fortune.
One of the most famous encounters involving Hessian troops took place at Trenton on December 26, 1776, when George Washington’s army surprised and defeated Hessian forces after crossing the Delaware River. Many of the Hessians sent to labor in Pennsylvania were believed to have been among the prisoners captured in that campaign.
By August 1777, Hessian prisoners had arrived at Elizabeth Furnace. Coleman initially received 22 prisoners, with the total number employed there eventually reaching about 70. They were not simply held at the furnace as captives. They became part of its wartime labor force, digging the long channel that would help direct water from Segloch Run toward the furnace works. It was an unusual reversal of fortune: soldiers captured after fighting for Britain were now working in the Furnace Hills for an ironmaster whose furnace supplied the American cause.
Coleman did not simply take possession of these prisoners on his own. Lancaster resident Edward Hand, who served as George Washington’s adjutant general, appears to have played a role in arranging their employment. Coleman paid the Continental Congress for their labor, not in cash, but through credit connected to iron products supplied for the war effort. In one account, the rate was between 32 and 45 shillings per prisoner per month. That equates to roughly $172 per soldier per month in today’s money.
This arrangement may sound strange today, but it fit within the wartime reality of the 18th century. Prisoners needed to be housed, guarded, fed, and managed. The Continental Army needed supplies. Coleman needed labor. The Hessian prisoners became part of that practical, uncomfortable equation, so they dug.
Foot by foot, the ditch took shape along the base of Cannon Hill. The work likely took months rather than years. One modern estimate suggests that with several two-man teams working six days a week, the channel may have been completed in about three months. Whether that figure is exact or approximate, it gives a sense of the sustained labor required.
The ditch also connected the war to Lancaster County’s iron landscape in a physical way. Elizabeth Furnace was not an isolated workshop. It belonged to a larger network of furnaces, forges, charcoal pits, timberlands, roads, and labor systems. Iron production required ore, limestone, trees for charcoal, skilled workers, teamsters, and water. A furnace could consume tremendous amounts of wood, with some estimates suggesting that an acre of timber converted to charcoal might keep a furnace in blast for only a day. The Hessian Ditch was one piece of that larger machine, designed to squeeze more power from the local landscape.
The prisoners’ living conditions remain less certain. A building long associated with the Hessians has been described as their barracks or even a kind of dungeon. Older accounts portray a high stone room with thick walls, stacked sleeping levels, a fireplace, and little comfort. More recent archaeological interpretations suggest the prisoners may have been housed in a former casting house, possibly with access controlled by a high doorway and removable ladder. Whatever the exact arrangement, it is difficult to imagine the experience as anything but harsh. These were captured soldiers, far from home, doing heavy physical work in the hills of Pennsylvania.
Yet the story did not end with the war.
After the Revolution, many Hessian soldiers returned to Europe. Others remained in North America. Some settled in Pennsylvania, including areas near Elizabeth Furnace and southern Lebanon County. Local traditions have long held that descendants of some of these men still lived in the region generations later. That detail gives the Hessian Ditch a complicated afterlife. The men who arrived as enemies and prisoners helped build an industrial waterway for the American cause. Some later became residents, neighbors, and ancestors in the very country they had been hired to fight.
Today, the furnace itself is gone, though historic structures associated with Elizabeth Furnace remain. The estate has been restored and adapted as an event venue, while much of the surrounding land connected to the ditch is associated with State Game Lands 46 and the broader wooded landscape around Middle Creek. The Hessian Ditch survives mostly as terrain rather than architecture. It is a line in the earth, partly filled, partly hidden, and still surprisingly present after nearly 250 years. Physical evidence of captured soldiers, wartime iron production, and one of Lancaster County’s more unusual Revolutionary War stories.
Planning Your Visit
Most, if not all, of the surviving Hessian Ditch lies within State Game Lands 46 between Furnace Hills Pike and Segloch Road north of Brickerville. Visitors should remember that this is not a manicured historic park. It is wooded public land managed primarily for wildlife and hunting.
The Google Map below shows the approximate location of the Hessian Ditch. It is visible if the map view is switched to terrain.
.
Because this area is part of Pennsylvania State Game Lands, visitors should be especially cautious during hunting seasons. Wear blaze orange when appropriate, follow all Pennsylvania Game Commission rules, and avoid interfering with hunters. Do not dig, remove artifacts, disturb stonework, or alter the ditch in any way.
Go Deeper
Go deeper into the story with the Uncharted Lancaster podcast as it examines the Hessian Ditch at Elizabeth Furnace.
Resources
- The History Behind the Hessian Ditch, a Revolutionary War Structure
- Restored and Reinvented, Elizabeth Furnace is Ready to Party!
- Lancaster New Era Fri, Feb 03, 1995
- Intelligencer Journal Fri, Jul 02, 1971
- Lancaster New Era Fri, Sep 09, 1921 ·Page 3
Discover more from Uncharted Lancaster
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.