Somewhat less than eighty years ago, Mr. Benjamin Jones, a merchant of Philadelphia, invested a portion of his fortune in the purchase of one hundred thousand acres of land in the then unbroken forest of the Pines.  The site of the present hamlet of Hanover struck him as admirably adapted for the establishment of a smelting-furnace, and he accordingly projected a settlement on this spot.  The Rancocus River forms here a broad embayment, the damming of which was easily accomplished, and one of the best of water-privileges was thus obtained.  On the north of this bay or pond, moreover, there rises a sloping bluff, which was covered, at the period of its purchase, with ancient trees, but upon which a large and commodious mansion was soon erected.  Here Mr. Jones planted himself, and quickly drew around him a settlement which rose in number to some four hundred souls; and here he commenced the manufacture of iron.  At frequent intervals in the Pines were found surface-deposits of ore, the precipitate from waters holding iron in solution, which frequently covered an area of many acres, and reached a depth of from two or three inches to as many feet.  The ore thus existing in surface-deposits was smelted in the iron-works, and the metal thence obtained was at once molten and moulded in the adjoining foundry.  Here, in the midst of these spreading forests, many a ponderous casting, many a fiery rush of tons of molten metal, has been seen.  Here, five-and-forty years ago, the celebrated Decatur superintended, during many weeks, the casting of twenty-four pounders, to be used in the famous contest with the Algerine pirates whom he humbled; and the echoes of the forest were awakened with strange thunders then.  As the great guns were raised from the pits in which they had been cast, and were declared ready for proof, Decatur ordered each one to be loaded with repeated charges of powder and ball, and pointed into the woods.  Then, for miles between the grazed and quivering boles, crashed the missiles of destruction, startling bear and deer and squirrel and raccoon, and leaving traces of their passage which are even still occasionally discovered.  The cannon-balls themselves are now and then found imbedded in the sand of the forest.  In this manner the guns were tried which were to thunder the challenge of America against the dens of Mediterranean pirates.

Hanover, too, in its day of pride, furnished many a city with its iron tubes for water and for gas, many a factory and workshop with its castings, many a farmer with his tools, but the glow of the furnace is quenched forever now.  The slowly gathering ferruginous deposits have been exhausted, and three years have elapsed since the furnace-fires were lighted.  The blackened shell of the building stands in cold decrepitude, a melancholy vestige of usefulness outlived.  In consequence of the stoppage of the works, Hanover has lost seven-eighths of its population, and only about fifty inhabitants remain in the white cottages