Red Clay Valley Marshall Families -- Part 2

This is the second part of Robert Wilhelm's story of the Marshall family in the Red Clay Valley. In Part 1, we learned the early history of the family in the area, as well as the stories of the Marshall family's ventures in the iron and kaolin industries. In this part, Robert focuses on the papermaking aspect of the family business. 


By Robert E. Wilhelm Jr.

Thomas S. Marshall & Sons – Papermakers

Israel Marshall's Auburn Heights

With the Gilpins developing a way to make paper by machine on Brandywine Creek in 1803, Robert’s₄ son Thomas₅ takes an interest in papermaking and in 1856 he is permitted to convert the family flour mill at Marshallvale to the production of paper. Thomas concentrates on the manufacture of news and wrapping papers including difficult to make tissue papers. The family papermaking business is operated primarily by Thomas₅ with assistance of others and eventually his children, until the mill is destroyed by fire during the winter of 1865-66. One of the tenant homes, built around 1850 and known as the Marshall Mill House, is still standing along Creek Road (Route 82) and has been preserved by The Land Conservancy for Southern Chester County on the Marshall Mill House Preserve.

The area that John₃ Marshall purchased in 1765 eventually became known as Marshall’s Bridge in Kennett Township. The rebuilt paper mill, now larger than it had been before the fire, offered increased paper production. Thomas₅ S. names the mill the “Homestead Mill at Marshall’s Bridge”. The new mill most likely relied on papermaking machinery supplied from one of the industrial paper machinery makers in Wilmington such as Pusey & Jones or Jackson & Sharp.

Various historical accounts suggest that Thomas’₅ paper business at the Homestead Paper Mill was an average business but barely made a profit. According to NVF historical documents, the mill’s cylinder papermaking machine produced paper 33” wide at a rate of 50 feet per minute (137.5 square feet per minute or 212 letter-sized sheets per minute). The Homestead Mill could produce 2-tons of rag paper a week. Paper was now the primary product produced by the Thomas S. Marshall Company in the early 1870s.

Red Clay Valley Marshall Families -- Part 1

As I've been busy lately with other projects, Robert Wilhelm has stepped up with a couple of fantastic guest posts about the Marshall family, which, frankly, I would have never been able to write. This first post covers the early history of the family, as well as the brothers who engaged in the iron and kaolin businesses. The next post will cover the paper and fibre side of the family. Huge thanks to Robert, and I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.


By Robert E. Wilhelm, Jr.

Marshall's Bridge, Kennett Township, PA

Most Delawareans are well aware of the DuPont Company and how the company evolved and came to prominence after Victor Marie du Pont and Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, emigrated from France in 1800 to the young United States. Some folks may be aware that the first machine-made paper produced in this country was manufactured at the Gilpin Mill north of Wilmington on Brandywine Creek in 1803. Delawareans generally don’t know that the second iron rolling mill in the colonies was built at Wooddale and that the first Prussian iron, zinc sheet, and tin sheet manufactured in North America came from Wooddale. However, predating the DuPont’s arrival in the area, are the Garrett and Marshall families. Both families contributed significantly to Delaware’s early industrial age heritage.

Arriving in the early 1700s, John Garrett purchased five tracts of William Penn’s Letitia Manor in the 1720s and settled in the “upper county of the three lower counties of the Province of Pennsylvania” (now known as Yorklyn, DE). Garrett and four neighbors constructed and operated a grist mill at the present site of Marshall Brothers Mill now part of the property of Delaware’s newest state park, Auburn Heights Preserve. The Garrett family went on to build a snuff empire a half-mile downstream on the Red Clay that by 1900 produced a third of the world’s supply of snuff. After the forming of the United States and Delaware in 1776, the area the Garretts settled became known as Auburn, DE.