Jeremiah Reeves was born in England in 1845 and began his career in the mills of Wales, United Kingdom, at the age of ten. In 1867, he immigrated to the United States, where he worked in the steel mills of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Connellsville, Pennsylvania. He met his wife Jane Rees in Connellsville, and they married in 1869. In 1883, Reeves acquired a steel rolling mill in Dover for $14,000. Despite a history of financial difficulties, the Reeves Iron Works expanded several times and employed over 800 men. The iron works and later the Reeves Manufacturing Company established Dover as an industrial center during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1900, Jeremiah Reeves purchased 400 acres of land and a house owned by local farmer Valentine Wills. He immediately began renovating the house, and when the work was completed, the original farmhouse had expanded to include seventeen rooms, a wrap around porch, and a third floor ballroom. An adjoining carriage house was added to the property in 1902. The Reeves family lived in the home from 1901 through J.E. Reeves' death in 1920 and his wife's in 1926. In 1975, the home was given to the Dover Historical Society, and since 1976 it has been open to the public as a museum of local history.