be had for only the charge getting it," a tanning business could 

 be "managed to good advantage." '^^ Delaware's other two 

 counties, Kent and Sussex, were described as "The chiefest and 

 most commodious places . . . for Breeding and Improving all 

 sorts of Cattle." ^'^ The plentiful combination of hides and bark 

 caused tanneries and bark mills to be built in 1689 at Milford, 

 in 1693 at Angola Neck in Indian River Hundred, and, soon 

 afterwards, in Georgetown, where a number of small tanneries 

 operated. ^^ 



Tanners came to Wilmington at an early date. Francis Robin- 

 son, one of the town's first Quaker residents, prepared buckskin 

 and chamois leather in the 1730's, the decade in which the town 

 was chartered. In the 1740's, Joseph West built a tannery,^- and 

 as early as 1742, while others were busily building gristmills, the 

 Starr tannery began operation.^^ In the 1750's, with the town's 

 population and trade fast increasing, the Philadelphia newspaper 

 advertised a lot for sale "with water running across it fit to plant 

 a tanyard in." ^^ In the same years, the Pennsylvania Gazette 

 again described a tannery owned by David Ferris as being par- 

 ticularly commodious and "conveniently situated with suitable 

 Buildings and Utensils for carrying on the Business, and a Spring 

 of good water, which is conveyed in Spouts to all the Parts of the 

 yard."^^ Apparently the advantages of good water were as clear 

 to Delaware tanners as to Diderot's encyclopedists. 



John Lewden owned a tanyard very near Wilmington in 1774 

 and, in 1778, Isaac Starr "became acquainted with the tanning 

 business." Starr, a resident of Wilmington, recollected that just 

 before the Revolution — 



Although we abounded in every requisite material for making leather, yet 

 very large quantities were imported from England; no power existed here to 

 reject it and foster our own manufactures; a consequence was that when war 

 came the country was bare of leather and suffered greatly.*'*' 



^' BuDD, Good Order Established in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, pp. 40-41. 



^^ Gabriel Thomas, "An Historical and Geographical Account," p. 323, in Myers, ed.. Narratives 

 of Early Pennsylvania .... 



*• Conrad, History of the State of Delaware, vol 2, pp. 723, 730. 



82 Scharf, History of Delaware, 1 609-1 8SS, vol. 2, pp. 650-651. 



8' McLane Report, vol. 2, p. 756. 



8* Pennsylvania Gazette, July 4, 1754; the lot was owned by Joseph Hewes. Similarly Job Jacob's 

 advertisement in the Gazette, July 13, 1749. 



85 Pennsylvania Gazette, September 7, 1758. According to the Delaware Gazetted September 17, 1791, 

 Ferris' tanning business comprised 18 vats, 6 handlers, 3 lime vats, a well house and a currying shop. 



*** Mcl.ane Report, vol. 2, p. 749. References to Isaac H. Starr, tanner, may be found in the Sharpley 

 Account Book (Business records,' Historical Society of Delaware, Wilmington), pp. 4-5. 



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