Rittenhouse Town: America's First Paper Mill

In sixteen ninety, a German Mennonite minister named William Rittenhouse built a paper mill on the banks of Paper Mill Run here, making it the first paper mill in the American colonies. Rittenhouse had come from the Rhine Valley, where paper-making was already a sophisticated trade, and he recognized that the steady stream flowing through this valley was ideal for powering the heavy mill wheels.

Over the following generations, the Rittenhouse family expanded the operation into a small industrial village. By the eighteen fifties it contained over forty buildings, and about six or seven of those early structures still stand. The community also gave America one of its first native-born scientists: David Rittenhouse, the astronomer and clockmaker who later became the first director of the United States Mint, was born here in seventeen thirty-two.