RESTORATION ON THE BRANDY WINE

BY NORMAN B. WILKINSON*

ON HIGH land a few miles north of Wilmington, Delaware, 0J are the modern, well-equipped laboratories of the du Pont Company Experimental Station. In its shadow, less than a mile distant, down in the valley of Brandywine Creek, a series of abandoned, three-walled stone mills of another era line the west-

E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS Founder of the company which bears his name, and president, r8o2-i834. Conte&M Aleetherian MiUa-Hagley F"nzjdation ern bank of the stream. The hilltop laboratories represent the contemporary stature of a vast and complex chemical enterprise. The abandoned mills in the valley are the mute remains of its

*Mr. Norman B. Wilkinson, who was until recently Assistant State His- torian on the staff ofthe Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and a Contributing Editor of Pennsylvania History, is now Research As- sociate with the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation. 179 180 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

founding a century and a half ago. From valley to hilltop unfolds a chapter of history important to the understanding of industrial beginnings in America. In this setting there is now in progress an historical restoration that will tell the story of the Brandywine industrial region from the mill seats upstream in Chester County, Pennsylvania, to its junction with Christina Creek and the Dela- ware River at Wilmington. The preservation of existing buildings and the restoration of other parts of this early milling center have been undertaken by the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, a foundation recently established by members of the and officials of the du Pont Company. The first step in the restoration is the creation of an industrial museum within the walls of a building that was a cotton mill in 1814 but converted to making powder kegs some seventy years later. Here in the Hagley Museum will be dioramas, working models, documents, and illustrations describing the varied industries that drew their power from "Tancopanican's" swift waters in a day of mill wheels and water turbines. Plans are in the making for the rebuilding and equipping of several of the old powder mills to show the successive steps in the making of black powder, the principal explosive and pro- pellant used during the greater part of the nineteenth century. The re-creation of the atmosphere of a powder-making community- minus explosions-will be undertaken wherever feasible. Physical restoration will center around the powder-making area of Eleu- therian Mills-"liberty" mills-where Eleuthere Irenee du Pont erected his first mill and home in 1802, and in the Hagley Yards downstream that were acquired as the business expanded. The du Pont story, however, will not stand alone, out of con- text and isolated from its surroundings. It will be told as part of the history of a milling center designated by Jedidiah Morse as "probably the greatest seat of manufactures in the United States." When gazetteer Morse surveyed this scene -of industrial activity in 1815 he found "44 flour mills, 13 cotton manufactories, 15 saw mills, 6 woollen manufactories, and 6 mills, be- sides several others." The unnamed "others" would have included paper mills, slitting mills, a snuff mill or two, an oil mill, several RESTORATION ON THE BRANDYWINE 181

HENRY CLAY KEG MILL ON THE BRANDYWINE Before conversion into the Hagley Museum. Courtesy Eleuthians Mils-Hrwley Foundation

forges, a furnace, and one or more tanneries. All of these lay on the Brandywine, upstream from Wilmington a distance of six to eight miles. In that day, and for years thereafter, Brandywine flour from the mills of the Canbys, Leas, and Tatnalls, paper made by Gilpin, and du Pont powder, were everywhere acclaimed as superfine and top quality. In the Hagley Museum these and the other in- dustries will be portrayed in effective exhibits. Out of a broad programn of research in the history of this milling center will come a clearer picture of its operations and a better understanding of its role in the nation's efforts to couple economic independence with its political independence during the nineteenth century. When completed, the museum, the mills, and the historic in- 182 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY dustrial area will memorialize the inventiveness, the venture, and the labor of generations of Brandywine mill owners and their workers. It is hoped that the restoration will allow visitors to step backward through time into an era when water wheels, mill stones and races, Conestoga wagons, and river shallops were making and conveying the products that gave strength to a grow- ing country and made possible a better life for its people.