Brandywine: An Early Flour-Milling Center 
By Peter C. WELSH 
Associate Curator, Department of Civil History 
United States National Museum 
Smithsonian Institution 
[With 7 plates] 
“Rpw PEOPLE are at any considerable distance from gristmills,” 
wrote St. John de Crévecoeur of late 18th-century America. Fast- 
flowing streams, whirring waterwheels, and massive millstones, once 
a common sight, are now all but forgotten. Today an occasional grist- 
mill survives, giving mute testimony to Crévecoeur’s observations and 
to the unimposing beginnings of a still important industry whose 
foundations were laid in the Delaware Valley along such creeks as the 
Wissahickon, Neshaminy, Pennypack, Crosswicks, Rancocas, Pen- 
sauken, Chester, and Brandywine. In fact after 1700, on most 
streams mills of every size and shape, supplied with an abundance of 
wheat from the rich farmlands of the Middle Atlantic region, met 
domestic needs as well as the demands of hungry markets in Europe 
and the West Indies. Philadelphia, New York, and later Baltimore 
thrived as flour ports and trade-conscious merchants eagerly pur- 
chased the product of nearby mills, hoping either to ship the barreled 
staple worldwide in their quest for the riches and goods of foreign 
lands, or to speculate on the domestic grain market which, in the 
1750’s, became lucrative for the first time (1). 
Some mills ground solely for local needs and were called custom 
mills; others, larger and better equipped, ground specifically for the 
export trade and were known as merchant mills. The former were 
usually isolated and on the lesser creeks; the latter were often found 
in clusters, situated on the larger streams, where waterpower was 
ample and where transportation—by road or water—linked the mill 
to the wheatfields and the market. Occasionally, a combination of 
geography, waterpower, grain supply, and entrepreneurial skill pro- 
duced milling centers of unusual capacity which for a time dominated 
the economic life of their locality. The Brandywine Mills, on the 
1 Numbers in parentheses refer to notes at end of text. 
677 
