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Forging an Economy

  • Apr 15
  • 5 min read

Updated: Jun 29

Business and Industry in Sadsbury’s Early Days


When the first European colonists settled in the Delaware Valley, the region’s generous rainfall, mild climate, and rich soils provided the perfect environment for planting wheat, the most desirable and profitable grain in the world. As early as the 1650s, farmers produced enough wheat not only to sustain themselves but also to send a surplus to market. Grist mills were not just the place farmers took their grain for grinding, they were places where they learned news, met with friends, and transacted business. The Delaware Valley reigned as the world’s foremost milling center until around 1815 when changes in European markets and an agricultural pest called the Hessian Fly led to declines in wheat production.


Diagram of a mill with a water wheel: this example has an undershot drive [6] with a hopper [1] for the grain and a chute [2] conveying it to grindstones [3]. The flour produced fell into a chute [4] and then poured into a bag [5].
Diagram of a mill with a water wheel: this example has an undershot drive [6] with a hopper [1] for the grain and a chute [2] conveying it to grindstones [3]. The flour produced fell into a chute [4] and then poured into a bag [5].

By 1860, railroads made possible the free flow of farmers and commerce to the fertile plains of the Midwest. Ultimately, millers in the Delaware Valley saw no point in competing with Minneapolis, which by the late 1800s was home to corporations like Pillsbury and Gold Medal Flour. Many of the mills in the Brandywine Valley converted to textiles, paper, and gunpowder.


Early factories were located along creeks and rivers to harness the power of flowing water for energy. Blacksmiths forges, cotton mills, and flour mills were located by the side of streams and rivers to power their hammers, cotton gins, and millstones with a water wheel. Buck Run Creek (a tributary of the west branch of the Brandywine River) was central to industry in Sadsbury Township; at one point, there were six mill sites within a 2 mile length of the creek.


Map showing the course of Buck Run Creek through Sadsbury Township. This map shows Sadsbury Woolen Mills when it was known as the Brook Factory.
Map showing the course of Buck Run Creek through Sadsbury Township. This map shows Sadsbury Woolen Mills when it was known as the Brook Factory.

One of the earliest mills in Chester County was that of John Jones, in Sadsbury Township, erected around 1721. In 1722 he sold it to Thomas Moore of Caln to operate as a grist mill. The furthest upstream mill was Paist’s Mill, well-known in its time as a flour mill. This mill included a cider press which was a local attraction for farmers bringing grain for milling.


Not far from Paist’s Mill was Seniors Factory, later known as the Calvin Cooper Fulling Mill. Fulling is part of the woollen cloth making process and involves cleaning and milling woven cloth to produce a material that is thicker and denser, and therefore warmer and often water repellent. A little further downstream was the William Parke Saw Mill, later owned by Joseph K. Parke by 1883. Joseph Parke operated a tannery here including the pits used for soaking the hides with oak bark, mineral salts, and coloring ingredients to convert them to leather. The bones of the animals were used to make fertilizer.


Even further downstream was the mill of Evan Jones, reputed to be the place sugar cane farmers in the area brought their crop for grinding and boiling for molasses. The original building later known as the Thomas W. Jackson Grist Mill was built by the Parkes in the early 1700s.


Another prominent mill on Buck Run Creek, located less than a mile south of Sadsburyville, is credited with the growth of that village.




A late 19th century owner of that mill was John W. Brooks, who renamed the operation the Sadsbury Woolen Mill. This mill manufactured wool into broad and narrow cloths, cassimeres, cassinettes, along with coarse and fine flannel. The Brooks Mills property consisted of several homes, a large dam and a stone quarry. In the winter, ice was taken from the dam and stored in an ice house. A narrow gauge railroad track ran into the quarry area; the stone was used for building.



Brooks expanded the business, but realized that Buck Run Creek could not supply all the power needed, and the mill was converted to steam. The factory burned two times, and faced financial problems when it ceased operation in 1891. At that point, it was purchased by Patricius McManus, a Philadelphia contractor who converted the property to a stone quarry for road construction projects.


Further south in Pomeroy is Russell’s Mill. In 1734 Samuel and Hannah Homes sold a parcel of land to William Dickie which consisted of “all the messuage, water, and corn Mill plantation”:



Forges


Pennsylvania led the colonies in iron production. After independence, the nation’s output of iron grew enormously, from 54,000 tons in 1810 to 286,000 in 1840. During this period, Pennsylvania produced half of the national total. The state was the leading iron manufacturer largely because of its natural resources – iron ore deposits, vast forests that provided charcoal, abundant coal beds that also supplied fuel, the limestone used as flux, and streams for water power.



A forge is a furnace or a shop equipped with a furnace where metal is heated or wrought. In a smithy, skilled workers use the forge to heat metal and shape it through hammering. While there are no documented forges in Sadsbury or West Sadsbury Townships, there were two forges located just over the line in Lancaster County on Octorara Creek near Christiana. Sadsbury Forge No. 1, known as the Upper Forge, was built in 1800; Sadsbury Forge No. 2, known as the Middle Forge, was built in 1802. The two Sadsbury forges were well-established by October of 1814, when the Lancaster County Orphan’s Court ordered them to be auctioned off following the deaths of brothers George Withers (1747 - 1811) and John Withers Sr. (1729 - 1813).



James Sproul purchased the forges from the Withers estates in 1825 (the same year Rebecca Lukens, America’s first female industrialist, took the reins of the Lukens Rolling Mills after her husband’s death). Horses and mules were used to transport smelted iron from Lancaster to the Sadsbury Forges, along with charcoal from the surrounding countryside. After Sproul’s death in 1847 the No. I Forge fell into disuse; the scarcity of charcoal and the subsequent owner’s failure to manufacture coke led to the remaining forge being abandoned as well. 


Watch and Clockmakers


George W. Baldwin was born on September 22, 1777 and by the age of 25 he was established as a clockmaker in Sadsburyville. Baldwin built the clock works, but not the cases – his clock cases were made by West Chester’s Thomas Ogden.


John Boyd was born in 1805 and grew up at the Black Horse Tavern at what was known as Boyd’s Corner, about 2 miles west of Sadsburyville. John Boyd’s father, Michael Wallace Boyd, died in November 1827 and John inherited the duties of running the family farm and Tavern. There, he established his clock shop. Boyd’s name first appeared in the Sadsbury tax lists in 1830; he was thereafter classified as a “W. Maker.” Around this time, there were three John Boyd’s recorded or owning property in Sadsbury Township: one was a weaver, one a chairmaker, and the other a watchmaker. Boyd was considered to be among the last of the old school of clockmakers in Chester County. 




Sources:

by Kleinchrome

 
 
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