Rittenhouse Paper Mill

To those who lived and worked at RittenhouseTown the sights and sounds of a working mill were the stuff of everyday life.  The rush of water, the hum of the water wheel and the clatter of the hooves of horses echoed through the narrow valley cut by the fast moving Paper Mill Run. Wagons from nearby Germantown brought linen rags to be made into paper and carried away finished reams destined for the local printer.   The smell of pulp permeated the air.

Built on the northern banks of a tributary of the Wissahickon Creek by the Rittenhouse family in 1690, the Mill quickly became the heart of a thriving industrial community known since the early 18th century as RittenhouseTown.   In a time before electricity, the rapidly flowing Paper Mill Run provided the energy needed to power the mill.  Rushing water turned the water wheel.  A series of gears converted the wheel’s rotation into usable energy so that Mill machinery could transform linen rags into paper pulp.  Sometime near the end of the first decade of operation, an unusually violent spring storm caused the wheel to spin out of control.  The Rittenhouse family and their workers quickly rebuilt utilizing salvaged material and employing a slightly different technology in order to ensure the future safety of the wheel.  The unwillingness of William Rittenhouse’s partners to participate in reconstruction gave William and his son, Nicholas, the opportunity to begin to bring the entire operation into their own hands.  By 1703 the new mill pictured above was producing paper and by 1707, the Rittenhouse family was in complete control of all aspects of mill production.  In that same year, the Homestead, located opposite the new mill on the south side of Paper Mill Run, became the first permanent home for the Rittenhouse family.

For the next 150 years, while eight succeeding generations of Rittenhouse family and their workers continued to live and work all along the Paper Mill Run and Wissahickon Creek, the heart of the community remained the early Mill. Today the Mill Site and adjacent 1707 Homestead and circa 1720 Bake House remind us all of the importance of the paper making industry to the development of early America and the essential role of the Rittenhouse family as suppliers of locally produced paper for letters, legal documents, maps and books.  Visitors to Historic RittenhouseTown today can still experience the sense of community which has characterized this unique spot since the 17th century.