28  Chemical  Manufacturing  in  Philadelphia    {A™iJ?ary  ^tgxl™' 
read  in  the  sketch  of  the  career  of  Samuel  Wetherill,  from  which 
we  previously  quoted : 
Samuel  Wetherill  was  one  of  the  promoters  and  managers  of  the  "  United 
Company  of  Pennsylvania  for  the  establishment  of  American  Manufacturers." 
He  embarked  his  whole  soul  in  the  business,  and  in  1775  set  up  at  his  own 
dwelling  house  in  South  Alley,  then  called  Hudson  Square,  now  Commerce 
Street,  a  factory  for  jeans,  fustians,  everlastings  and  coatings.  (Fustian  is 
a  cloth,  the  warp  of  which  is  linen  and  the  woof  thick  cotton.  It  derived  its 
name  from  Fusht,  a  town  on  the  Nile  where  it  was  first  made.)  This,  busi- 
ness was  just  for  spinning  and  carding  and  did  not  necessitate  any  heavy 
machinery,  but  in  order  to  properly  prepare  these  goods  it  was  necessary  to 
have  them  dyed.  There  being  no  dyers  in  Philadelphia  equal  to  the  task, 
Samuel  Wetherill  was  obliged  to  undertake  this  branch  of  the  business  also. 
His  house  on  South  Alley  is  described  as  being  of  two  frames,  which  I 
suppose  means  what  we  would  call  a  double  house,  and  he  was  probably  able 
to  turn  one  frame  into  a  factory  and  let  his  family  live  in  the  other.  How- 
ever that  may  be,  a  little  inconvenience  more  or  less  in  those  days  did  not 
matter,  where  all  were  working  together  for  the  common  good  and  for  the 
highest  principles.  ...  So  it  was  that  Samuel  Wetherill,  who  started  as  a 
carpenter,  became  a  weaver,  then  chemist,  etc.,  and  when  the  war  broke  out 
he  did  not  scruple  about  entering  into  a  contract  with  Congress  to  furnish 
clothes  for  the  patriot  troops,  being  a  patriot  himself ;  and  it  is  said  that  his 
timely  shipment  of  supplies  to  Washington's  little  army  at  Valley  Forge  saved 
it  from  disbanding.  This,  his  allegiance  to  his  country,  and  his  expressed 
approval  of  bearing  arms  for  its  defense,  were  the  cause  of  his  being  "  dealt 
with"  by  the  Society  of  Friends  and  cut  off  from  religious  communication 
and  fellowship  with  them.  Thereupon  he  and  a  few  others  who  had  publicly 
taken  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  American  cause  started  the  Society  called 
the  "  Free  or  Fighting  Quakers." 
Probably  the  first  to  inaugurate  the  manufacture  of  chemicals,  as  such,  in 
this  country,  was  the  firm  of  Christopher,  Jr.,  and  Charles  Marshall,  sons 
and  successors  of  Christopher  Marshall,  an  early  druggist  and  one  of  the 
original  "  fighting  Quakers  "  of  Philadelphia ;  this  firm  had,  as  early  as  1786, 
entered  quite  extensively  into  the  business  of  making  muriate  of  ammonia 
and  Glauber's  salt.  The  factory  is  described  by  Watson,  in  his  "  Annals  of 
Philadelphia,"  as  being  a  grim  and  forbidding-looking  building  on  Third 
Street  near  the  stone  bridge  over  the  Cohocksink  Creek.  This  firm  is  said  to 
have  developed  an  annual  output  of  upwards  of  6,000  pounds  of  muriate  of 
ammonia;  quite  an  achievement  for  that  time. 
Manufacture  of  Sulphuric  and  Other  Acids. 
Let  us  now  take  up  the  beginnings  of  the  manufacture  in  Phila- 
delphia of  one  of  the  fundamentally  important  chemicals,  viz.,  sul- 
phuric acid.  This  substance  is  recognized  as  the  basis  of  all  chem- 
ical industries  and  its  manufacture  must  precede  that  of  most  other 
