Parti 



Early Philadelphia Mechanics 



Philadelphia's role in the formation of the United States during and for a number 

 of years after the Revolutionary War is generally well known. The Continental 

 Congresses, sitting in 1775 and 1776, rallied the Colonies to a common cause, which 

 was eloquently stated in the Declaration of Independence. After the war, the 

 Constitutional Convention successfully wrought the document that gave the new- 

 nation direction and unity. Philadelphia was capital of the United States from 

 1790 to 1800, while the new federal city of Washington was being readied as the 

 seat of government. 



From the beginning of the Revolution until the final physical transfer of the 

 national government to Washington in 1800, the great and near-great Americans 

 of the age went about their business in that part of Philadelphia where George Escol 

 Sellers was to grow up. The life in the city was carefully, often vividly, docu- 

 mented because these statesmen and political architects were there. 



The picture of Philadelphia after 1800 is much less distinct, however. The 

 city's part in the rapid development of the tools and skills that enabled the United 

 States, within less than a generation, to end its dependence upon England for 

 intricate or heavy machine work has been generally overlooked. Only the merest 

 handful of observers were sufficiently aware of the importance of or had enough 

 interest in technological pursuits to make a record of the mechanicians and their 

 haunts; and those who wrote of the burgeoning industrial complex were generally 

 so occupied with production machines, such as looms, and end products, such 

 as steam engines, that little of their attention could be spared for the machine tools 

 and techniques upon which depended the ability to produce the end products. 

 It is to the task of capturing a record of this most elusive aspect of the city's culture 

 that George Escol Sellers has so successfully addressed himself. I2 



12 The student of any aspect of early Philadelphia history should know of "Historic Philadelphia 

 from the Founding until the Early Nineteenth Century," Transactions of the American Philosophical 

 Society (1953), vol. 43, pt. i, which contains 27 original papers and a carefully constructed map 

 by Grant M. Simon showing historic buildings and sites. Each paper is detailed and specific. 

 The collection provides a good survey, although it slights technological developments. 



