Existing comment:
Oliver Canby, a Quaker from Burke County, Pennsylvania, settled in Wilmington in 1740 and by 1742 had built the first mill on consequence on the lower Brandywine. Other Quaker millers, such as Thomas Shipley, Joseph Tatnall and Thomas Lea built mills near Canby's, transforming the tidal basin of Brandywine Creek into an important mill center. Here at the close of the 18th century were fourteen merchant mills capable of grinding 500,000 bushels of wheat a year. During the Revolution, the Confederation and the early years of the Republic, the flour mills pictured here were perhaps the most celebrated industrial community in America.
The success of the Brandywine millers was due to an abundance of waterpower, the proximity of grain in the fertile fields of lower Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and convenience of water transportation -- and Quaker ingenuity and resourcefulness. The 1840 painting by Bass Otis reproduced on the right is a view of the flour mills on the lower Brandywine owned by the Canbys, Leas, Pooles, Prices, Shipleys, and Tatnalls. |