Elizabeth’s great-grandfather had amassed a 23,000-acre tract of land straddling the colonies of New York and New Jersey in the mid-1700s. With this holding, he built an empire of iron, the furnaces going full bore to feed the ambitions of the Americans. He was best known for forging a chain, weighing in excess of 100 tons, that was strung across the Hudson River during the Revolutionary War to prevent British ships from sailing above West Point. The English held New York, but the Townsend metal chain kept them tied up at the mouth of the main water entrance to the interior.
