BOTANICAL ASPECTS OF PAPER-PULP AND TANNING INDUSTRIES 52 I 



Domestic materials, bark. Craftsmen skilled in the art of tanning were 

 among the early English colonists in the New World. A tabulation of artisans 

 and workers in Virginia in 1620 included tanners and leather dressers, but 

 whether they pursued their professions at that time or depended wholly on 

 imports of leather goods to fill their needs is not known. 



They came also to New England, and within a year or two after the arrival 

 of the Mayflower in 1620, perhaps the first tannery in British America was 

 set up by Micah Richmond and Deacon Crumby of Plymouth. More reliance 

 has been placed on the record that Experience Mitchell, a tanner who came 

 in the good ship Ann in 1623, established a tannery at a settlement called 

 Joppa, where he treated hides for 60 years. Subsequently the firm of Experi- 

 ence Mitchell and Sons maintained a tanning business for 170 years. Other 

 immigrant tanners, too, entered the industry, and by 1650, 51 tanneries were 

 operating in New England. 



Sometime prior to 1635, Captain Matthews operated a tannery in Virginia, 

 and 1638 saw the first tannery in New Amsterdam. The first one in New 

 Jersey, at Elizabethtown, began in 1660. 



Unlike the early American paper-pulp industry, which developed in par- 

 ticular centers, that of tanning was nearly everywhere an integral part of 

 colonial life almost from the beginning. Rapidly increasing population made 

 the demands for leather constantly greater. Probably 200 tanneries were 

 operating in the Colonies in 1700. Toward the middle of the eighteenth 

 century nearly every town north of the Virginias had its own tannery. By 

 1750 more than 1,000 of them had been established; the number rose to 

 2,400 by 1800; and in 1810 over 4,460 were operating in 17 States and 6 

 Territories. An all-time peak of 8,229 tanneries may have been attained in 

 1840. Since then, except for slight deviations, there has been a very steady 

 decline in the number of American tanneries. From a few over 600 in 1921, 

 the number fell to about 385 in 1935, then rose to about 450 in 1939, and 

 was back at 350 in 1950. 



Oak bark had long been the principal tanning material in Britain and many 

 parts of Continental Europe, and the first American tanners turned to the 

 American species of Quercus, especially to chestnut oak {Q. prinus), but also 

 to the black {Q. velutina) and white {Q. alba) species. 



Before many years, however, the abundant supply of eastern hemlock 

 {Tsuga canadensis), with 8 per cent to 10 per cent tannin in its bark, brought 

 it into early and prominent use, especially in New England and New York, 

 while in the central and southern Colonies oak bark was still the preferred 

 material. 



Increased slaughtering of both domesticated and wild animals fed the 

 prospering tanneries with hides, and the great abundance of native tanbark 

 with which to convert them into leather supported a philosophy of inexhausti- 

 ble natural resources. In 1810, when the value of American tannery products 



