As 2026 begins to wind down, seeing Big Boy roll into Pottstown for the America250 celebration stands out as the year’s defining moment for me. Built in 1941, this powerful locomotive drew people from across the region. Along its route, spectators stood five-deep or more, cheering as it passed. No matter where you stood, catching a glimpse of this giant of American railroad history was simply priceless.

Even months later, I can almost smell the steam spilling from its towering frame. I remember feeling the ground tremble beneath my feet as Big Boy approached. When the engine rounded the bend and finally appeared at Pottstown station, it filled the entire screen of my camera.

That visit turned my thoughts toward a much earlier chapter in Pottstown’s story. Long before this giant made its way through Pennsylvania, the iron industry was taking shape along the Schuylkill River. In 1751, John Potts, the man for whom the town would eventually be named, purchased nearly 1,000 acres of land. That decision would help lay the groundwork for the community we know today.

John Potts was born in Germantown around 1710, the eldest son of Thomas Potts and Martha Keurlis. His father’s path into Pennsylvania’s iron industry was not necessarily a straight one. Some historical accounts suggest Thomas worked as a butcher before becoming involved in ironmaking and land transactions. Whatever his earlier occupation, Thomas eventually established himself in the iron trade, introducing his son to the industry that would shape much of his life.

When John was only about six years old, his mother died. His father remarried a year later, to Magdalen Robeson, and the family eventually grew to include three half-siblings: Martha, Thomas, and David.

His education began at a Quaker-run primary school, reportedly under the direction of Francis Daniel Pastorius. Pastorius was no ordinary schoolteacher. An important figure in early Pennsylvania education, he had helped establish a school in Germantown, where he taught children reading and other subjects. But John’s education didn’t stop when he left the classroom. According to the Pottstown Historical Society, he and his half-brothers went on to apprentice as potters before eventually becoming ironmasters.

By the mid-1720s, Thomas Potts had become involved in managing Pennsylvania’s ironworks, leasing Colebrookdale Furnace and eventually acquiring interests in both the furnace and Pine Forge. The family made the decision to leave Germantown for the rural Manatawny region. It was here that John grew up, with furnaces and ironworks becoming familiar parts of everyday life.

Ironmaking depended on the land and the people who worked it. Trees were cut for charcoal to fuel the furnaces, while ore was mined and hauled by wagon. Inside the furnace, the material was smelted, producing molten metal that flowed into channels formed in a bed of sand. As it cooled, it hardened into what was known as pig iron. The name is traditionally believed to come from the arrangement of the sand molds, with a main channel feeding smaller channels that resembled a sow nursing her piglets.

Iron could be made into different forms, depending on its intended use. Cast iron had a relatively high carbon content, making it hard and brittle. Wrought iron, by contrast, contained very little carbon, making it more malleable and easier to hammer and shape. Producing wrought iron required further processing at a forge, where pig iron was refined to remove much of its carbon.

In 1734, John Potts married Ruth Savage, daughter of Samuel Savage and Anna Rutter Savage Nutt. Ruth’s family had deep roots in Pennsylvania’s iron industry. Her grandfather, Thomas Rutter, was a true pioneer, establishing the colony’s first iron forge along Manatawny Creek in 1716. Her mother, Anna, carried on that family legacy, becoming an influential iron businesswoman in her own right. Those family connections would prove significant. In 1745, Anna transferred her half interest in Warwick Furnace to John and Ruth. Established along French Creek in Chester County in 1737, Warwick Furnace became an important addition to their growing interests.

Managing an ironworks required careful coordination, from preparing the fuel and supplying the ore to transporting the finished iron to forges and markets. John understood how these operations fit together. Before long, he would have an opportunity to put that knowledge to work on a much larger property along the Manatawny Creek and Schuylkill River.

On November 7, 1751, Potts entered into an indenture with Samuel McCall Jr. and his wife, Anne, to purchase two tracts of land totaling approximately 995 acres. The agreed price was £3,000, a substantial sum in the eighteenth century. The property had much to offer. The creek could provide waterpower, the Schuylkill River offered a convenient route for transporting goods, and the surrounding woodlands supplied the timber needed to make charcoal. Potts now had the land and resources to expand his ironmaking operations, establish mills, and develop the surrounding property for agriculture.

In 1752, Potts built a substantial Georgian mansion on his property, creating a home for John, Ruth and their thirteen children. Today, it is known as Pottsgrove Manor.

Yet the Potts family was not alone on the property. Paid workers, indentured servants, and enslaved people also lived and labored there. Their labor sustained both the household and the wider ironmaking enterprise, and their stories belong to the history of Pottsgrove as well.

But the house was only one part of the plan. Pottsgrove extended well beyond the mansion and forge. The estate included two gristmills, a sawmill, farmland, and extensive woodland. Grain was ground at the mills, logs were turned into lumber, and the surrounding land supplied resources for the ironmaking operations. Together, these activities made Pottsgrove a working enterprise that brought agriculture, milling, timber, and ironmaking together.

John had built an enterprise that could continue beyond his own lifetime. But he had another ambition: to create a settlement that would bring people and commerce together on his land. Around 1761, Potts began laying out a town on part of his property. He called it Pottsgrove.

By the time the Reverend Henry Melchior Muhlenberg visited in 1764, the settlement was already taking shape. Muhlenberg recorded nineteen houses and noted Potts’s desire to establish a German Evangelical church in the growing community. Potts had provided land for a church and burial ground, and a log church was eventually built on the site. The congregation that grew from those early beginnings became Emmanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church, which continues to serve the Pottstown community today. The settlement was small, but it was becoming more than an extension of Potts’s ironmaking enterprise. It was beginning to take on a life of its own.

In time, Pottsgrove would become Pottstown. The borough was officially incorporated under that name in 1815.

John Potts died on June 6, 1768, at about 58 years of age. Ruth survived him by nearly eighteen years, dying on January 7, 1786. John would never see how the community he had set in motion would develop in the generations that followed.

His eldest son, Thomas, inherited Pottsgrove Manor and eventually sold the property in 1783. The sale marked a change in ownership, but it did not erase the foundations his father had laid. The settlement continued to grow beyond the boundaries of John’s original plans, its future no longer resting in the hands of the man who had first envisioned it.

Nearly two centuries after John Potts built his home here, a group of local citizens stepped in to help preserve it. In 1939, the Pottstown Historical Society, led by Marjorie Potts Wendell, purchased the house and its four surrounding acres, determined to restore the property to its former elegance. The following year, the Society sold the property to the Borough of Pottstown for one dollar.

Ownership later passed to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which completed the restoration in 1952. In September 1988, the manor came under the administration of Montgomery County, which continues to maintain the historic property today.

Today, visitors to Pottsgrove Manor can admire its beautiful Georgian architecture and explore rooms furnished to evoke life on the eighteenth-century estate. The restored manor offers a glimpse into the lives of John Potts and his family, as well as the servants and enslaved people whose labor was part of its history. Yet the landscape surrounding the house has changed dramatically. Of the 995 acres John Potts acquired in 1751, only four remain with the manor today, a small remnant of the land on which he began building his enterprise.

John Potts’s influence extended well beyond the iron industry. He served as a justice of the peace and a judge of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. He was also elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, representing both Berks and Philadelphia Counties at different times. His success in business also brought him prominence in the region, and he became increasingly involved in the civic life of colonial Pennsylvania.

Of course, John could not have known what that stretch of Pennsylvania land would one day become. He saw its potential, put his experience and ambition to work, and laid foundations that would reach far beyond his own lifetime. The furnaces would cool, the land would change hands, and generations would come and go. But the community that grew from his vision would carry his name forward, a reminder that sometimes the most enduring legacies begin with a single decision to see what a place might become.

If you’d like to visit Pottsgrove Manor and see the house for yourself, guided tours are offered hourly, Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 4pm and Sunday from 1 to 4pm. The last tour begins at 3 p.m. The manor is closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission is a suggested $2 donation, and free parking is available on-site.