Ajan*ua^'  ^5™' )    Chemical  Manufacturing  in  Philadelphia. 
In  October,  1811,  Samuel  Wetherill,  Jr.,  obtained  patents  for  a  new  mode 
of  washing  white  lead  and  for  screening  and  separating  metallic  from  cor- 
roded lead  in  the  process  of  making  red  lead,  and  using  the  first  machine  ever 
used  for  manufacturing  purposes  in  the  United  States  This  method  has  been 
generally  adopted  and  used  by  all  makers  of  lead. 
The  name  of  the  first  white  lead  firm  was  Samuel  Wetherill  &  Son, 
Samuel  "Wetherill,  Jr.,  evidently  being  the  active  member.  After  his  father's 
death  in  1816,  Samuel  Wetherill,  Jr.'s,  sons  joined  in  the  business  and  the 
firm  became  Samuel  Wetherill  &  Sons.  After  the  death  of  Samuel  Wether- 
ill, Jr.,  in  1829  it  became  Wetherill  Brothers.  The  store  of  the  firm  was  at 
65  N.  Front  Street,  the  warehouse  and  mill  of  the  old  establishment  were 
on  Coomb's  Alley,  back  of  Second  Street. 
When  the  residence  part  of  the  city  spread  to  Twelfth  and  Cherry 
Streets,  Samuel  Wetherill  having  bought  ten  acres  of  land  on  the  bank  of 
the  Schuylkill  River  below  Chestnut  Street,  there  in  1847,  his  sons,  Wetherill 
and  Brother,  built  the  white  lead  and  chemical  works  and  continue  to  this  day. 
John  Harrison  also  began  the  manufacture  of  white  lead  in  1806. 
The  firm  of  Mordecai  &  Samuel  N.  Lewis,  which  afterwards  be- 
came John  T.  Lewis  &  Brothers,  also  began  the  manufacture  of 
white  lead  in  1812,  making  three  Philadelphia  firms  manufacturing 
paint  colors  at  that  time.  These  three  earliest  manufacturers  of 
white  lead  and  paint  colors  or  their  lineal  successors  have  con- 
tinued in  business  to  the  present  time,  or  considerably  over  a  cen- 
tury, and  have  done  much  to  give  Philadelphia  its  long  continued 
prominence  as  a  chemical  manufacturing  center. 
Chromates  were  probabfy  first  made  in  Baltimore,  though  as  early  as 
1816  a  Mr.  Wesener,  a  German  chemist,  had  established  himself  in  Philadel- 
phia in  the  neighborhood  of  Broad  and  Cherry  Streets,  where  he  made 
chrome  salts  and  chrome  pigments  in  considerable  quantities.  Being  nearer 
the  source  of  supply  of  the  raw  material,  the  Baltimore  manufacturers  had  a 
decided  advantage,  so  much  so  that  before  the  middle  of  the  last  century  the 
business  had  drifted  back  to  that  city. 
The  manufacture  of  varnishes  followed  that  of  paint  colors. 
Christian  Schrack  who  was  a  manufacturer  of  paints  in  Philadelphia 
in  1 81 6,  later  established  the  varnish  manufacture,  and  already  in 
1836  an  export  trade  in  American  made  varnishes  had  begun. 
The  manufacture  of  shot  by  the  granulation  of  lead  while  not 
properly  called  a  chemical  industry,  is  closely  related  to  the  lead  pig- 
ment manufacture.  This  manufacture  of  lead  shot  was  one  of 
Philadelphia's  earliest  industries.  From  Winslow's  "Biographies 
of  Successful  Philadelphia  Merchants,"  page  142,  we  quote : 
