Research Repor T the 1858 Millwright and Machine

I . RESEARCH REPOR T THE 1858 MILLWRIGHT AND MACHINE SHOP AT HAGLEY Joy Kaufrn.ann, Principal Researcher David Hounshell, Principal Writer Jacqueline Hinsley, Director of Research The Hagley Museurn., 1980 TABLE OF CONTENTS Report pp.I-20 Notes pp. 1-11 Appendix I: Visual Evidence Appendix II: Manuscript Sources Consulted pp.I-5 The 1858 Millwright and Machine Shop at Hagley Introduction In any area of production, manufacturing establishments are dependent I . upon facilities for machine building, servicing, and maintenance. For e;x:- ample, from its beginnings in the United States, the textile industry spawned machine shops to construct and maintain textile machinery; often, the machine shop. was one of the first structures built when a new textile mill was established. Some of these machine shops, such as the Saco-Lowell shops eventually grew into famous machine building es tablishments in their own right. I Although it did not become well known for its machine-building, the "old machine shop" at Hagley played an equally important role in providing services and maintenance for the Du Pont black powder works on the Brandywine" River. This research report documents the establishment, growth, and operations of this facility from 1858 through the first years of the twentieth century. In addition, the report enumerates the various machinery, tools, and appliances which were acquired for us e in the machine shop. The Building and its Growth The "old machine shop," so-named by custom, ought more properly to be called the "millwright and machine shop, II for that is how its creators alluded to it. Moreover, this name also suggests the impetus for the con- 2 struction of the shop in 1858; the shop emerged out of a millwright tradition in the powder yards. As conceived, the shop provided a new, expanded facility in ~hich the Du Pont millwrights could fit up new powder mill machinery and maintain or repair existing equipment. -2- Surviving maps provide one indication of the millwrighting origin of the 1858 structure while at the same time suggesting the changing character of the facility's operations over the course of its forty-five-year history. An 1834 map of the Hagley Yard records a small, square "miU- wright shop" located immediately on the millrace, below the sawmill and north of the sulphur house and coal mill. 3 A later map of 1874 also shows a "millwright shop" at or near the same site as that of 1834, but it is clear that the later shop is the one that survives today as the Black Powder Exhibit 4 Building. Indeed, this structure may have been an addition to an incor- P9r.~~onof ".-!. the foundations of the earlier millwright shop; the north wing of H-32 roughly corresponds with this shop. By 1903, the maker of a map of the Hagley Yard regarded the structure as the "machine shop," and by 1904, with the opening of the new, expansive machine shop below Henry Clay Factory (the Keg Mill), the 1858 building had become known as the 5 "old machine shop." Yet the maps fail to document important modifications to the original millwright and machine shop. In 1865 a "back building" (whose roof measured 29 ft. by 39 ft.) was added to the rear of the original 6 building (whose dimensions were 30 ft. x 100 ft.). This addition was perhaps accompanied by a modification to the center section of the original structure! Later, in 1871, the company made another addition to the building, enlarging the original building by roughly one-third (the roof of 8 the additiorr measured 30 ft. x 34 ft.). This particular addition helps to explain the asymmetry of the building, as it exists today, and the variation in the size of building stone on its downstream wing. -3- Other documentary evidence about the building is difficult to find. Bishop's History of American Manufactures (1866) contained a brief description of the powder works, which noted that, "[aJttached to the 9 Powder Works are extensive Machine and Millwright Shops." E. Paul du Pont (1887-1951) noted in his recollections the "millwright shop along the front wall of which, outside, is piled the most astounding assortment of wheels and machine parts in iron and brass. JO Du Pont's memory of the shop corresponds precisely with two photographs made by Pierre Gentieu, 11 one in 1885 and the other of an unknown, but probably later, date. The undated photograph shows the millwright and machine shop with windows blown out and a damaged roof over the center section. This image matches Francis Gurney du Pont's description of the building following the "tremendous" ex- 12 plosion of October 7, 1890. Other evidence about the building comes mainly from a 1902 appraisal 13 of the Brandywine Yards. This appraisal suggests that the structure and its contents (appraised separately) were among the most valuable properties of the powder manufacturing complex. Operations As with most of the day-to-day affairs of the company in the nineteenth century, the Du Pont owners and managers never described or out- lined the operations of the millwright and machine shop. The shop and the activities that went on there were simply taken for granted and, therefore, never duly recorded. Reconstruction of the shop's operations must be inferred from general and diffuse correspondence and related manuscripts. -4- The millwrighting origins of the 1858 shop are, once again, funda- mental to understanding its operation. The building and its contents, ....a1ong with the nearby blacksmith shop, provided the company's millwrights with the supporting facilities necessary in the construction of new powder mills (of any variety) and in the maintenance of existing ones. As pointed out earlier, a "millwright" shop had exis ted as early as 1834, and there is evidence that 14 prior to the 1858 shop, there was a "lathe shop." Perhaps the new building was a conscious attempt to consolidate machinery and work areas for the benefit of the company's millwrights and general operations. Obviously, the "machine shop" aspect of the facility became more important as the company increasingly replaced wooden mill components with iron ones. Powder-making machinery -- the things inside the mill structures -- moved" toward all-metal construction as the century proceeded, thus placing increased demands on the machine shop. The millwright of the early part of the century gave way to or became the machinist and mechanic of the late nineteenth century. Yet at no time in the nineteenth century (and, indeed, not until about 1913) did the company become self-sufficient in the construction and main 5 tenance of mills and mill machiner/ For this reason, the shop remained a modest facility both in terms of its machinery and its work. During the period from 1858 onward, the company's correspondence with firms such as Betts & Seal, Harlan & Hollingsworth, J. Morton Poole, and Pusey & Jones suggests that the company depended heavily upon outside machine shops and machine builders for the construction, and often the maintenance of mill- machinery, both for the Brandywine Mills and the new mills the company built at Wapwallopen, Pennsylvania in the mid-sixties and early seventies. -5- Letters and bills document outside steam engine and boiler repair; gear, piston, and pulley fabrication; straightening and manufacture of mill shafts; powder press manufacture and maintenance; rolling mill machinery construction of wooden keg making machiner machinery construction and maintenance; repair work and rnodificati.ons to wooden keg making machinery; repair work on machine tools; and even 16 sharpening and hardening of tools. Indeed, there is no manuscript evidence that the millwright and machine shop built or even maintained at any point in the nineteenth century all of the machinery related to powder manufacture. The burden of evidence against the notion of the millwright and machine shop's capability of self- sufficiency must be weighed against the two, con- temporary claims that this facility was where, "all repairs are made, and 17 most of the machinery is built" and that, "[h]ere repairs and parts are made 18 for all the heavy machinery." Unquestionably both these accounts overstated the case. The first, written in 1866, certainly did so. The second, the boyhood memories of E. Paul du Pont who was born in 1887, was closer to the truth. Surviving records of machinery and tool purchases suggest that, as the nineteenth century progressed, the millwright and. machine shop grew in its capability to produce work of quality and in quantity. Francis Gut:ney du Pont's hand is very much in evidence in the affairs of the shop especially during the late 1870s and the 1880s when new machine tools, woodworking machines, and appliances were purchased in great numbers and when there appears to have been an emphasis on more careful and precise workmanship. In 1883, fol' example, du Pont purchased a set of Whitworth gauges and instructed machine builders and machinists supplying machinery parts for the 19 powder works to work to the same gauge (thereby insuring better fits). At about - 6- the same time the company purchased a battery of machines to make all- 20 metal powder cans. The maintenance of these machines placed new demands on the millwright and machine shop, thus increasing the momentum 21 of acquiring both tools and skills. By the turn of the century this momentum led the company to build a much bigger machine shop a short distance downstream from the Keg Mill and to equip the shop with additional and larger machine tools than those 22 brought from the old machine shop. There is little doubt that this new facility was capable of producing -- and indeed did produce -- most if not all the machinery required for the Brandywine powder works and associated 23 works, such as the Carney's Point facility for smokeless powder.

Load more