BRANDYWINE—WELSH 683 
world.” The Brandywine Mills were especially well situated since 
shipping could come “up to the very doors of divers of them” (36). 
Soon after Proud’s “History” appeared in 1798, the geography com- 
piled by the German scholar Christopher Ebeling was published 
in Hamburg; and Europeans read about “the only town of any 
importance” in Delaware, and about the Brandywine Mills where 
“90,000 bushels of wheat” could be reduced “to nothing but fine 
flour” (37). Thus, both at home and abroad, the flour mills on 
Brandywine Creek were attaining some renown as a new century 
began. 
Between 1772 and 1820 the milling center at Brandywine reached 
its zenith; in an area renowned for the most notable concentration of 
mill industries in America, Wilmington’s Quaker millers had long 
been the dominant force in an industrial valley that was “making 
rapid strides toward perfection”(38). Their leadership had been 
continuous almost from the inception of their mills. But already 
a few miles upstream, the gunpowder mills of E. I. du Pont were 
grinding, under massive stones, the product which in the 19th 
century would replace superfine flour as the product synonymous 
with the name of the creek. At the end of the 18th century, Brandy- 
wine flour was a watchword in America. By the end of the 19th it 
would be gunpowder that focused the attention of a nation on 
the area. 
The maritime-commercial activity of Wilmington waned after 1810 
and the reputation of the flour mills on the Brandywine diminished 
correspondingly as the hub of the flour merchants’ world shifted 
from Philadelphia to New York and the West. The westward move- 
ment of both the population and the wheat belt, improved methods 
of transportation, and a new technology presaged by the use of the 
steam engine were all causes of this displacement; and each step 
away from a dependence on the coastal and tidewater settlements 
was invariably followed by the rise of a new flour-milling center. 
This transition was a slow process, as was the decline of the local 
flour mills that accompanied it (39). 
The westward movement was well begun by 1840 and the subsequent 
history of the Brandywine flour mills reflects the decline of the 
business which had been Delaware’s first important industry as well 
as one of America’s most celebrated collection of mills. In 1880 the 
mills on the south side of the creek stopped grinding; by 1926 the 
heirs of Canby, Shipley, and Tatnall sold the property on the 
opposite shore. After 184 years the Quaker milling oligarchy of 
Wilmington was no more. Its greatest monument is the flour-milling 
industry of modern America which can look directly to the Brandy- 
wine for its antecedents. 
