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WEDNESDAY MORNING, AUGUST 30, 1939

Girard-Is Talk of the Day

When Water Mills Lined Philadelphia Creeks


Famed Factory on Ridley Made Paper for Money
This is much too big an order for me to fill. A Mt. Airy reader of The Inquirer asks me to name all the old mills which once operated along the numerous creeks in this vicinity. Starting with the Swedes along the lower Schuylkill there have been hundreds. When Penn came in 1862 he found that the Swedes made the best flour. The waters of Darby, Cobbs,. Ridley, Crum, Wissahickon, Wingohocking, Frankford, Paper Mill Run and other streams turned the wooden wheels of woolen mills, cotton factories, iron plants, saw mills and grist mills where corn, wheat and rye were converted into flour. There were dozens of paper mills alone lining these swiftly flowing creeks. A premium was paid for 'rags during the Revolution. They were the source of the best paper needed for Continental currency and other uses. Franklin was financial backer in a number of paper mills. He not only designed but printed money for New Jersey and this State. All the primitive forges and furnaces got their power from water. The first in the State was along Manatawney Creek. Rittenhouse's pioneer paper factoryfirst one in America was on Paper Mill Run, Germantown. Good water was then as now required in production of best paper, but then water also made the wheels go round, which today is a job for other things cuch as coal, gas, oil or electricity.

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