480 THE AMERICAN WOOD-PAPER COMPANY. 
materials, while in 17t6 there were 103 varieties from the same number 
of materials. I spare the reader the^catalogue. Principal among them, 
however, were rags, cotton-waste, gunny, hemp, India bagging, reed, 
canes, nettles, hops, moss, herbs- and so on. Such a struggle with poor 
Nature for Gab and Scribbles stuff, and even now no rest I 
In 1690 the first paper-mill was erected in Pennsylvania, near a 
stream called the Wissahickon, about two miles from the location of 
the present works of the Wood-Paper Company in the suburbs. of Phila- 
delphia. The founder was William Ryttinghuisen, of Holland, whose 
family had for generations made paper for the Dutch, and whose 
descendants to this day make paper in Manayunk. A good family that 
of Ryttinghuisen — thrifty and wise — who sensibly changed their name 
to Rittenhouse, and gave to science a grand-nephew of William, named 
David, much addicted to seeing stars among these high Wissahickon 
hills, and now known to all mankind as an eminent astronomer. I have 
seen a book made in the first mill, over 170 years since, bearing the 
Ryttinghuisen water-mark, "W. R., Penstlvania," with a trefoil, in- 
cased in a scroll — a neatly formed trefoil that any Irishman would accept 
as the shamrock, and as evidence that old William was a Fenian. The 
paper is hard — of good texture — browned by time, hut showing signs of 
careful make, and as strong and nearly as smooth as the ordinary sheet 
of note paper on which these words are written. It was a noted mill 
in those days, and the poet of the Pennsylvania colony rhymed about it, 
something after this fashion : — 
" The paper-mill is here hard by 
And makes good paper frequently, 
But the printer, as I here doth tell, 
Is gone unto New- York to dwell. 
No doubt but he will lay up bags, 
If he can get good store of rags. 
Kind friend, when thy old shift is rent, 
Let it to the paper-mill be sent." 
r Let me state, as an annotation, that the printer thus recorded as 
leaving Philadelphia for New York was the celebrated William Bradford, 
who spoke his mind freely about the Quakers, and was accordingly 
banished, printing-press and all. 
In those days, all paper was manufactured by hand. Each sheet was 
manufactured separately. The rags were made into a pulp in iron or 
stone mortars by trip hammers, it requiring several days to make a 
sample of dry finished paper. The capacity of the mill was about 
1,500 reams a year. How many hundred years it would have taken 
honest old William to furnish one year's supply of paper for some of 
the dailies. The business grew rapidly in the colonies. In 1769 there 
were forty mills in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, annually 
