"The great value of the water-power of the Brandywine was early recognized. The records disclose that two small mills existed as early as 1729, on land that for many years belonged to Dr. Tymen Stidham, and which came later, through one Samuel Kirk, to Oliver Canby. The latter was the first who erected a mill of any pretensions on the Brandywine, and he may be called the founder of the Brandywine Mills. The first mill erected by him stood near the present "Bishopstead," and was built in 1742. At the death of Oliver Canby, in 1755, the mill came into the possession of Thomas Shipley, who acquired other mill property, and in 1762 he built a larger mill near the terminus of French street, which was always known as " The Old Shipley Mill." Other mills soon followed on the south side of the stream. [Conrad]
Joseph Tatnall was the pioneer in the building of mills on the north
side of the Brandywine. Much difficulty was encountered in making a race-way on the north side because of the
many rocks along the stream, but through the energy of Joseph Tatnall and
Thomas Lea, his son-in-law, these obstacles were overcome, and as early as 1764
a group of eight mills were in successful operation, four on each side of the
stream. [Conrad]
In the old days of the mills there were, perhaps, more conspicuous indications of activity and of huge business than now. For the railroads handle thousands of bushels of grain and flour swifter and with less of outward show of labor than did the cumbersome Conestoga wagons carry their hundreds. These Conestogas, or “ inland ships,” which brought grist to the mills, were mighty vehicles constructed to carry huge loads, and needing teams of six horses to move them to good advantage on the average road.[Scharf]
The business of Mr. Tatnall was very extensive, as you may conclude
from one circumstance. Mr. Lloyd, a great graingrower in Maryland, came to sell
his wheat; went to Mr. T., who agreed to take all he had. Mr. Lloyd smiled, and
said, "Why, sir, my grain will amount to forty thousand dollars." The
reply was, "I will take it," to the great astonishment of that
gentleman, and perhaps not less so to the gentry of the present day to hear
that he paid the cash for it. It is creditable to his descendants to say that
the mills are now owned by his son and grandsons, the latter being the principal
millers. [1851]
Thomas Lea, [1757-1823] son-in-law to Mr. Tatnall, [and father-in-law of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea] was among the useful,
enterprising and wealthy men of his day, was often heard to say how much he had
been blessed; everything seemed to prosper in his hands; his family were just
as he wished they should be; he had secured for them a competency of this
world's goods, and he could now take his ease. He built the largest mill on the
Brandywine. When it had been a short time in operation, and was filled with the
finest grain, lo! trouble came upon him like a mighty rushing wind. The
destroying element, in a few hours, consumed and laid in ruins this queen of
the mills. [1851]
The original firm of Tatnall and Lea continued in business for many years. On the death of Joseph Tatnall, Thomas Lea became sole owner and continued the business during his lifetime [and president of Bank of Delaware]; building in 1811 an additional mill which was destroyed by fire in 1819, and rebuilt. At his death in 1824, his son William Lea [1805-1876] succeeded to the business. The firm of William Lea & Sons, composed of the father and his two sons Preston [future Governor] and Henry, was formed in 1864, and continued until the death of the father in 1876. The sons continued the business... [Conrad]
He [William] was first employed with his father at Brandywine, then he engaged in
business at Manayunk, Pa., and afterwards, for the benefit of his health,
removed to New Orleans, Louisiana. Here he remained for a time, and then
entered into business at Terre Haute, Indiana. He married in 1836 and in
1837 he returned to Wilmington and settled in his old home at Brandywine, where
he spent the remainder of his life. [Scharf]
The present [1888] Brandywine Mills of The William Lea & Sons’ Company,
upon the north side of the Brandywine, number four, and they have also a large
mill at New Castle, Delaware. The main structure of the latter is seventy-two
feet square, and it contains two runs of stone and fourteen sets of rolls, and
an elevator located beside it has a capacity of sixty thousand bushels of
grain. The Brandywine Mills are provided with five turbine wheels besides employing steam, the two forces
aggregating about seven hundred horse-power. The flour produced by this mill is all purified by a special patented
process owned and controlled by the company. The mills are supplied with the
latest improved machinery for manufacturing both flour and meal by the roller
process.[Scharf]
The “ A” Mill was built in 1881-82. It is 110x53 feet, five stories
high, contains twenty-three sets of rolls and five pairs of mill-stones. This
mill is used exclusively for the manufacture of flour.[Scharf]
The Corn Mill is five stories in height and fiftyfive feet square. It
is provided with two sets of rolls and one pair of mill-stones. The “ Jog ”
mill, seventy feet square and three stories high, has four sets of rolls. The
two mills just described are used in the production of the “ Brandywine
Kiln-Dried Corn Meal.” [Scharf]
The “B” Mill, the most recently erected, five stories high, and eighty-six
feet by seventy-two feet in dimensions, is devoted exclusively to the
manufacture of fancy articles of white and yellow corn specialties, such as
hominy, grits, granulated corn-meal, corn flour, etc., and is one of the most
complete in the country. This large mill is equipped with eleven sets of rolls,
and with all of the latest adjuncts for scientific milling, and the convenient
and expeditious handling of grain. In addition, it has an automatic
hoisting-machine which lifts the full barrels from the lower floor and delivers
them into the cars. [Scharf]
These mills have a storage capacity of seventyfive thousand bushels of
wheat, and about one hundred and twenty-five thousand bushels of corn, besides
ample storage capacity for flour, meal, empty barrels and packages necessary to
the business. At these mills about two thousand five hundred barrels of flour
and corn meal are manufactured each day, besides the specialties mentioned
above. The brands of flour made at these mills are known as “ Best,” “ Clifton
Mill FFF,” “ Poutaxat,” “Kirk wood,” “Avalon,” “Occidental” and " Southern
Extra,” and the corn meal “ Lea's Brandywine Kiln-dried Corn Meal.” [Scharf]
These mills,
like the stream that sets them in motion, are of great notoriety, and have run
unrivaled in the full tide of their glory for the greater part of a century.
Recently, they have been shaded by those of greater magnitude and more modern
structure; yet it is doubtful whether they have been rivaled in business;
certainly not in their exports of corn meal. The situation is so accessible by
water that vessels can unload and re-load at their doors. [1851]
The business operations of their proprietors were even more notable by reason of the enormous amount of grain annually handled and the extent of country covered by their trade. The most of the grain was then raised in the counties of Dauphin, Lancaster, Berks and Chester,and was brought thence to the mills in the Conestoga wagons in vogue at that time and in those sections. Twenty or thirty of these wagons waiting to discharge their freight into these mills was a frequent spectacle in those days. The operations of this one firm were so heavy that it controlled the price of grain throughout a wide extent of country. [1880]
In 1880 Messrs. Lea & Sons erected a new mill at New Castle
especially for the production of the highest grades of patent flours Located on
the line of the Delaware Division of the Philadelphia, Wilmington &
Baltimore Railroad, it is constructed in the most thorough manner, is
essentially modern in every respect, every floor provided with speaking tubes
and signal bells and steam heating apparatus, and the building connected with
the Brandywine Mills—seven miles distant—by telephone, a private wire passing
under the Christiana river by a cable. The equipment comprises a Barnard &.
Lea's Separator, Trimmer's scourer, I brush machine, six pairs of mill stones,
four sets chilled rolls, three sets porcelain rolls, a Lawton and Arndt bran
machine, two sets corrugated rolls, four large purifiers, a Webster agitator
and several bran agitators, and eighteen large, and three small, reels. Motive
is supplied by a large steam engine of the celebrated Corliss pattern. Cars are
unloaded and loaded at the doors of the mill, the grain being dumped directly
into a conveyor, passed through hopper scales and distributed thence to every floor
of the building, and every possible facility is had for the prompt and
economical handling of flour and grain in enormous quantities. [1880]
These persons were all of the Society of Friends; plain, straight-forward men, calculating the cost before entering into any contract, expecting to pay the uttermost farthing, and from their own purses too. When you reflect on the present way of conducting business, with the facilities to accomplish every project, those persons of olden times must be placed among the highest order of enterprising men, and to whom this community is much indebted for its present prosperity. [1851]
1873-
Shall we take a glance at a historic mill? The best location for such a
structure where water-power just met tide-water, and shallops drawing eight
feet could load up at the shore, was selected in 1762 for mill-buildings which
still stand, and which were for many years the most famous in the country,
regulating the price of grain for the United States. The business soon
overflowed, and necessitated the building, in 1770, of the structures
represented in the engraving on page 371, the whole group, on the two sides of
the stream, being under one ownership, and known as "Lea's Brandywine
Mills."
Hither would come the long lines of Conestoga wagons, from distant
counties, such as Dauphin and Berks, with fat horses, and wagoners persuading
them by means of biblical oaths jabbered in Pennsylvania Dutch. From these
mills Washington removed the runners (or upper stones), lest they should be
seized and used by the British, hauling them up into Chester county.
When independence was secured the State of Delaware hastened to pass
laws putting foreign trade on a more liberal footing than the neighbor
commonwealths, thus securing for her mills the enviable commerce with the West
Indies. Much shipping was thus attracted to Wilmington, and the trade with Cuba
in corn-meal was particularly large. It was found, however, that the flour of
maize invariably rotted in a tropical voyage, and thereupon the commodity known
as kiln-dried corn was invented at the Brandywine Mills: two hundred bushels
would be dried per day on brick floors, and be thought a large amount, though
the "pan-kiln" now in use dries two thousand in the same time. The
dried meal was delivered at Havana perfectly fresh, and pay received, in those
good old days of barter, in Jamaica rum, sugar and coffees.
In the old times flour was heaped in the barrels and patted down with
wooden shovels: then, when full, a cloth was laid over the top, and the fattest
journeyman on the premises clambered up to a seat on the heap, to "cheese
it down" and imprint his callipyge upon it. Flour thus made and branded
was always safe to bring a high price, but never so high as in the short epoch
of the Continental currency, when the old entries of the Brandywine Mill books
show (1780) wheat bought at twenty-four pounds a bushel, a pair of the miller's
leather small-clothes at eighty pounds, and some three or four hundred barrels
of his flour charged at a gross sum of twenty-one thousand pounds.
The fine old mills are still in lively operation, manufacturing into
meal about a million bushels of wheat and Indian corn every year. The principal
proprietor receives us in his domain, the living image of easy, old-fashioned
prosperity, and narrates the long history of the structures, showing his little
museum of curiosities—now a whale's jaw bequeathed from the old fishing days,
now a Revolutionary cannon-ball—and helps us to realize the ancient times by
means of the music of the mill, which is loquacious now as it was under George
III. 1873
SOURCES
Conrad, Henry Clay. History of the State of Delaware, vol. 2 1908
Industries of Delaware: Historical and Descriptive Review : Cities, Towns 1880
Lippincott's Magazine. April 1873
Montgomery, Elizabeth. Reminiscences of Wilmington. 1851
Scharf, J. Thomas. History of
Delaware: 1609-1888. Phila: 1888
©2017 Patricia Bixler Reber
Forgotten history of Ellicott City & Howard County MD
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