In 1692, an early settler of Philadelphia named Richard Frame composed a poem titled A Short Description of Pennsilvania. Within his couplets, we can learn about the very earliest days of the American papermaking industry. The poem documents the manufacturing of linen cloth in conjunction with the making of rag paper in a mill located in Germantown, about seven miles north of Philadelphia. Frame writes,
From Linnin Rags good Paper doth derive,
The first trade keeps the second Trade alive: […]
A Paper Mill near German-Town doth stand, […]
Then of those Rags our Paper it is made,
As Frame attests, the first paper mill in North America was established in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1690 under the expertise of William Rittenhouse and his son, Claus, who together had recently immigrated to America from the Netherlands. William Rittenhouse was forty-four years old and had been trained in the Dutch methods of papermaking prior to seeking a new opportunity in America. (For a detailed account of the process of making rag paper, see our earlier blog post: “Papermaking: A Rags to Riches Story”)
The history of the early American paper industry includes prominent colonial-era figures and points toward many of the causes that sparked the Revolution.
In the early 1690s, the Rittenhouse Mill was funded by a company of prominent Philadelphia investors, including William Bradford, who was the first printer in the middle colonies. As Rittenhouse’s paper business achieved success, William and Claus gradually bought out their investors to own the mill outright. Bradford, reluctant to lose his monopolistic supply of locally produced paper, was the last stakeholder to relinquish his share in the Rittenhouse Paper Mill.
Despite the eagerness of American printers to acquire quality paper from reliable mills on this side of the Atlantic, the colonial papermaking industry was underdeveloped due to a scarcity of both cotton rags and skilled papermakers. Furthermore, the specialized equipment required to establish a paper mill—vats, stampers, presses, mould and deckle sets, etc.—were expensive and unavailable within the colonies. In short, colonial paper production was unable to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding American print industry. It was simply easier and more cost-efficient to import paper from Europe.
In response, many American legislatures offered grants and favorable loans to encourage the establishment of paper mills. For example, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed “An Act for the Encouragement of Making Paper” in 1728 that incentivized a group of prominent Bostonians to build a mill and to produce a set quantity of paper to supply local printers.
The British Parliament, on the other hand, was wary of allowing a colonial American paper industry to develop: British merchants who sold paper in the colonies did not want competition for a marketable commodity that was easy to transport. By 1732, Parliament had created a commission to investigate the development of the paper industry in America.
In truth, there wasn’t much to investigate. A handful of mills followed Rittenhouse in Pennsylvania, and Bradford established another mill in Elizabethtown, New Jersey in the late 1720s. In 1734, Parliament’s commission reported that a new mill in Milton, Massachusetts was producing paper worth £200 per year. Virginia established its first paper mill in 1744. Such limited domestic production of paper left the American colonies vulnerable to external market controls.
The British Parliament took advantage of the American dependence on imported paper with the Stamp Act of 1765, imposing a direct tax on anything printed on paper in America. Great Britain needed new revenue to service a national debt that had nearly doubled during the sprawling global conflict of the Seven Years War. The Stamp Act, Parliament’s first attempt to levy taxes on the colonies, targeted paper.
Under the Stamp Act, colonists were required to use officially stamped paper imported from Britain. Fees were levied on paper used for everything from diplomas to playing cards, from newspapers to legal contracts.
Infuriated by the Stamp Act as a form of taxation without representation, the colonists planned their economic and political responses. Using their economic strength as a large market for British goods, the Americans retaliated against Great Britain with Non-Importation Agreements, whereby colonial merchants in ports such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia pledged not to buy or sell British goods until the Stamp Act was repealed. The boycotting of imported paper, however, placed even greater demands on the limited supply of American-manufactured paper.
Demonstrations against the Stamp Act were organized by The Sons of Liberty, an underground association of political activists including Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. As chapters of the Sons of Liberty spread from Boston to Virginia between August of 1765 and March of 1766, the colonists built a network of revolt. Together, they protested against the Stamp Act’s infringement of their rights as British subjects: they marched through towns, hung effigies of Stamp Act administrators, and ransacked the homes of tax collectors.
Then, at the Stamp Act Congress, the separate colonies united together in common political cause for the first time.
Held in New York City in October of 1765, the Stamp Act Congress assembled representatives from across the colonies to coordinate a political response. Together, colonial representatives drafted the “Declaration of Rights and Grievances,” establishing the constitutional basis of rejecting taxation without representation. In this way, a conflict over paper resulted in an unprecedented expression of a unified and organized American political identity.
Although economic and political pressures forced King George III to repeal the Stamp Act in March of 1766, colonial grievances were again enflamed a year later when Parliament passed the Townsend Revenue Act, which taxed American imports of British products – including paper.
During the Revolutionary War, paper was extremely scarce within the United States due to America’s limited domestic paper production combined with the wartime trade embargo. In 1775, the fifty-three small-scale paper mills operating in the American Colonies were unable to produce enough supply to meet demand; some newspapers closed, many were printed less frequently, and most used only the thinnest of margins so as not to waste a bit of paper. Military officers scribbled their reports to headquarters on whatever scraps of paper they could find. The Continental Congress was forced to decide between using the scant paper available either to print official documents or to make the paper cartridges needed by the army for gunpowder casings.
The need for paper became so desperate that on July 19, 1776, the Continental Congress officially “resolved that the paper makers in Pennsylvania be excused from proceeding with the associators to New Jersey.” This meant that the United States needed papermakers more than soldiers — even as the British Army was advancing beyond New York, and even as the Associators (Pennsylvania’s volunteer military) were marching out to join the American defense in New Jersey. State and local legislatures across the U.S. passed similar measures to recall papermakers from militias back to their mills. As badly as the Continental Army needed soldiers on the front line against the British, the new nation needed paper even more.
One ream at a time, these paper-making Patriots produced the kindling of the American Revolution.
Sources and Further Reading
Bidwell, J. (2013). American Paper Mills, 1690-1832. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press.
Gates Jones, H., Ryttinghousen, C., Bradford W. (1896). “Historical Sketch of the Rittenhouse Papermill: The First Erected in America, A.D. 1690.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 20, No. 3. Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Hastings, P. (2024). “Papermaking: A Rags to Riches Story.” Bibliomania. Washington: Library of Congress Blogs.
Leonard, E. A. (1950). “Paper as a Critical Commodity during the American Revolution.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 74, No. 4. Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Maxson, J. W. (1968). “Papermaking in America: From Art to Industry, 1690 to 1860.” The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Vol. 25. No. 2. Washington: Library of Congress.
Weeks, L. H. (1916). A History of Paper-Manufacturing in the United States, 1690-1916. New York: Lockwood, 1916.