Historic Rock Ford opens in front of you: the General Edward Hand Mansion and the John J. Snyder, Jr. Gallery of Early Lancaster County Decorative Arts. This house sits in southeastern Lancaster, Pennsylvania, privately owned and operated by the Rock Ford Foundation, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, and is surrounded by Lancaster County Central Park. The house was owned by Edward Hand, an Irish-American soldier who served as adjutant general to George Washington during the American Revolutionary War.
Hand first purchased 160 acres here in 1785 and added another 17 acres in 1792, developing what eighteenth-century Pennsylvania called a "plantation" — a term for land under cultivation, essentially synonymous with "farm" at the time. That term had not yet acquired the modern association with chattel slavery, yet slavery was legal in all of the thirteen original states and did exist in Lancaster County during the Hand family's lifetime. The mansion was recognized for its historic significance when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 21, 1976.
Notice the mansion in front of you and the park that now enfolds it, linking Revolutionary service, farming, and decorative arts into one place.