University of Virginia Library

B. APPENDIX B.

[Page 22.]

Jacob Rittenhouse, now, in 1818, eighty-six years of age, a
grandson of Nicholas Rittenhouse the first papermaker in British
America, is living. He has been many years blind, but possesses an
excellent memory, which seems to be unimpaired. He received from
his father and grandfather many interesting narratives of the settlement
of Philadelphia and Germantown, and of the first printers and
papermakers in those places.

He says that William Bradford, the first printer in Philadelphia,
after he left this city, and settled in New York, often visited Philadelphia,
and that he would sometimes ride from one of these places
to the other in a day. [The connected distance then was one hundred
miles.] That when his grandfather and a few others settled in
Germantown, there was no gristmill nearer than Chester, fifteen miles
southeast of Philadelphia. There was no horse in the settlement for
some time afterwards, when an old horse was procured from New
York, and this horse was continually employed in carrying sacks of
grain to the mill at Chester, to be ground, and bringing it back
when ground. This was, at the time, continued Mr. Rittenhouse,
the only horse for common use either in the Germantown settlement,
or in Philadelphia. The grain for those living in Philadelphia, etc.,
continued to be ground in Chester, until William Penn built a gristmill
in Philadelphia, afterwards called the Globe mill, from a tavern
being erected near to it, the site of which is in Third street. This
mill was used as a gristmill until a short time before the revolution.

He mentions, among other things, the following, which shows the
estimation in which land was held in the early settlement of Philadelphia,
and the difference between its value then and at the present
day. Claus, the grandfather, was something of a carpenter, as well as
a papermaker. He constructed a kind of batteau on the papermill
stream, and occasionally descended with it to the Schuylkill, for the
purpose of fishing in its stream. A person from Philadelphia who

owned a large tract of land on the borders of this river, was one time
viewing and examining his possessions, when he espied Claus in his
boat fishing. The owner of the ground was so much pleased with
the unexpected sight of a boat, the first belonging to a white man
which had been seen in that stream, that he became desirous of
possessing it, and offered Claus, in exchange, a piece of land bordering
on the Schuylkill, of which he described the limits, and which,
it is said, contained about two thousand acres. Claus refused the
proffer.

Jacob Rittenhouse also mentions that his progenitors, when they
first arrived at Philadelphia, dwelt in caves dug in the banks of the
Delaware, during part of the winter 1687–8. Proud, in his History
of Pennsylvania, mentions these caves, and observes that they were
for many years reserved for the habitations of new comers, who had
not the means of obtaining other lodgings.