512 FULLING 



1838 — Beach grass, Isaac Sanderson, Milton, Mass. 

 1838 — Corn husks, Homer Holland, Westfield, Mass. 

 1841— Palm leaf, E. Thorp & Sons, Barre, Mass. 



In 1828 William Magaw, of Meadville, Pennsylvania, began making paper 

 from straw, an operation that was initiated the same year also in Chambers- 

 burg, Pennsylvania. It was said that an edition of the New Testament was 

 printed on the cheap yellow paper made in this fashion. In 1871 American 

 production of straw paper was estimated at 100 tons a day. 



In 1834 Dr. Jones, of Mobile, Alabama, made paper from both stalks and 

 husks of corn, as well as various kinds of wood and bark, particularly birch 

 and poplar. That same year Dr. Daniel Stebbins, of Northampton, Massa- 

 chusetts, imported paper mulberry trees {Broussonetia papyri j era) from 

 China with the thought of using the inner bark, as was done in China and 

 Japan, where this species had been among the first plants to be used in paper- 

 making. A few reams of paper were made from it, but growing the trees offered 

 insurmountable difficulties, and the venture was probably even less successful 

 than that of cultivating the same species in Virginia as a basis for an American 

 silk industry. Ancient-looking and gnarled successors to, if not the originals 

 of, those trees still stand along one of the streets in Restored Williamsburg. 



In 1855 several parcels of tule {Scirpus lacustris and 5. tat or a) were sent 

 from California to eastern manufacturers for testing as possible papermaking 

 material. In 1856 Henry Howe of Baltimore seems to have used bagasse. 



In 1860 the New Orleans Bulletin reported attempts to use 11 kinds of 

 material growing in Louisiana, including bagasse, cotton stalks, wild indigo, 

 and banana. 



In 1862 a mill in Lee, Massachusetts, searching for new and plentiful paper- 

 making fibers that could be harvested in New England, successfully made 

 paper from Gnaphalium. About the same time use of cactus as a papermaking 

 material was undertaken in a grain mill in San Jose, California, modified for 

 the purpose. The experiment was unsuccessful, but the mill was later used 

 for making paper from straw and waste paper. 



Esparto grass {Stipa tenacissima) from Mediterranean lands had long been 

 used in England for paper pulp, and in 1863 and 1864 one Boston mill im- 

 ported between 300 and 400 tons of the material. Because of high duty, im- 

 portation of the fiber was not continued, and efforts by European representa- 

 tives of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to obtain seed for America were 

 unsuccessful. Some seed was secured from Paris seedsmen in 1868 and was 

 introduced into the South, but nothing practical was accomplished. 



In 1869, okra {Hibiscus esculentus) was used in a mill at Chickasabogue, 

 Alabama, and in 1870 the Mobile Register was printed on it. A book pub- 

 lished that year listed nearly 100 substances that had been tried, including 



