U.S. Currency
Paper for the first U.S. Currency was produced by the Wilcox’s Ivy Mills Ivy Mills Property
The Flood of 1971
Devastating flood waters struck Concord Township on September 13, 1971. The rain began on Sept 11 but was much harder on Sept 13th & water rose quickly. The Chester Creek and its branches & tributaries were flooded when a stationary front stalled over the local area. The destruction started in the western areas of Delaware County, including Concord, and continued downstream to Chester leaving a path of destruction. 450 Delaware County residents were left homeless, mostly in Chester where there was major flooding. This was very localized flooding. Other areas of Delaware County and the Philadelphia region were not affected. In Concord, three people lost their lives. David Lindsay drove into water on Concord Rd near Station Rd where his car stalled on the railroad tracks. His passengers, daughter, Jean Espey, and 2 year old grandson, survived. The child was rescued early on by Steven Sheppard, a 19 year old neighbor & his friend. The daughter made it to the railroad signal box and climbed to her safety. Mr. Lindsay and Steve Sheppard clung to nearby fence posts. As the fence washed away, Mr. Lindsay was carried downstream where his body was found when the water receded. Sheppard was left clinging to a fence post. Sheppard and Espey were rescued by Ralph Clark, an Australian with rough water rescue experience, after the firemen were unable to do so. William & Muriel Mitchell drowned when their car was washed away further down Concord Rd. where a branch of Chester Creek passes under the road near what is now Riviera at Concord. The flood waters washed away the Ward, PA Post Office. The small frame post office building was located in the middle of the parking lot behind what is now Il Granaio. The building washed downstream and was demolished when it hit the nearby railroad trestle on the Newlin Grist Mill property. Mail service was never restored at Ward. The Cheyney Rd. bridge over the Chester Creek was ripped away from its footings and the bridge dropped in to the creek. The Newlin Grist Mill suffered extensive flooding & damage. The Penn Central Railroad Octoraro line, which ran from Wawa through Concord to Oxford, was extensively damaged. The worst damage was a section of about 400 ft of the track along Polecat Road that was washed about 25 ft out in to the Chester Creek. The damage was so extensive that it has never been rebuilt.
Garnets Among Us?
Did you know this community once thrived as a local mining area? Garnets were the “gems” of the Concord/Bethel area and a heavily used mine once existed near the entrance of The Clayton Park picnic area off of Garnet Mine Road. You may enjoy the following article, which was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1992 and reflects direct quotes from our President Emeritus Ginny DeNenno. The article not only provides a wonderful historical perspective, but reinforces the importance for CTHS to continue to preserve those “nuggets” for future generations. Note in 1964 the Junior/Senior High School was formalized as a school district and given the name “Garnet Valley” after consulting with the Clayton Family as their successful farm “Garnet Valley Farm” had first held the name for many years. You might also find it interesting to read a letter to Edith Clayton Lloyd, dated January 20, 1971, from her sister Emeline. This letter tells about the mine and an interesting event that occurred in 1926 when lightening struck and killed many cows due to the garnet veins running through the area. Old Garnet Mines Are A Dig Through County’s History By Joseph S. Kennedy, INQUIRER CORRESPONDENT POSTED: Philadelphia Inquirer – May 07, 1992 The garnet mines of western Delaware County, like the storied diamond mines of King Solomon, have been lost to time and legend. Both the mines and the miners are long gone. Only Garnet Mine Road and Garnet Valley School District serve as reminders of what more than 100 years ago was a unique mining operation. The garnet sand dug from the local mines was used for the mundane purpose of manufacturing sandpaper. According to Henry Ashmead’s 1884 History of Delaware County, it was John H. Smedley, a mineralogist from Middletown Township, who promoted the development of the garnet deposits on the Foulk Road estate of Charles Williams in Bethel. Smedley noted that the deposit, made up mostly of garnet sand with nuggets mixed in, made ideal abrasive material for use in grinding and shaping. After several years spent trying to get businesses interested in the deposits, Smedley succeeded in 1879 in arranging for the sale of the Williams estate to a New York state abrasives firm, Herman Behr & Co. The 47-acre site sold for $4,700, and mining operations began in the fall of that year. The mining operation was an open pit 200 feet wide by 85 feet deep. The sand was dug with hand tools, then bagged and hauled by horse and wagon to Boothwyn station. There, it was shipped by rail to the Behr Co.’s factory in Troy, N.Y. The garnet sand sold from $30 to $100 a ton depending on its quality. Miners also dug up a few garnet stones that were suitable for making jewelry. The Concord Historical Society has a few of the nuggets, polished and cut into gemstones. Ginny DeNenno, president of the historical society, said those stones had the dark red color consistent with quality garnet gems. “There simply were not enough nuggets found to make the operation pay,” DeNenno said. So it was the sand, the prime ingredient for sandpaper, that was the lifeblood of the mining operation. In November 1900, freezing temperatures burst the lines of the steam pump that kept water out of the pit. Water built up rapidly, thousands of dollars worth of machinery was lost, and Behr Co. decided to close its mine. But that did not spell the end to garnet mining in the area. In the 1890s, while Behr’s mine was still in operation, a new mine was started by American Glue Co. of East Wampole, Mass., which also manufactured sandpaper. The “new mine” was on the Fulton farm, just across the road from the “old mine.” Concord Historical Society files indicate that the last surviving miners of the “new mine” gave a program to the Garnet Valley Home and School Association in 1960. The four surviving miners, by then all in their 80s, described the “new mine’s” operation. Like the old mine, it was an open pit, about 40 feet deep. At the bottom of the pit, tunnels or drifts were dug outward, according to the four main points of the compass. The tunnels were usually about 50 feet long. The garnet sand was dug out by pick and shovel, loaded onto hand-operated railcars and pushed to the center of the pit. From there, the sand was lifted to the surface by large wooden buckets and taken to the processing building. There, the sand was beaten, crushed and washed. Next, it was dried. When dry, the sand was poured into bags of 165 pounds each and carted off to either the Chester Heights or Boothwyn station for shipment by rail to the company’s factory in Massachusetts. To do the work, the mine employed 15 men full time as laborers, carpenters, machine operators and teamsters. The new operation closed in 1906 because, according to the miners, the company found a desirable supply of garnet sand closer to its manufacturing site. Over the years, both mines filled with water, and the new mine was used as the Bethel Township dump. According to DeNenno, the mines were filled in with the construction of the Conchester Highway in the late 1940’s. Revised January 2022
History Unlocked – January 2017, Polecat Road House History
Polecat Road House – The Historic Landmark that Started It All – Part I By: Karen Dingle Kendus, Concord Township Historical Society As one of the first townships created in William Penn’s Pennsylvania colony, only two years after Penn acquired the land, Concord Township takes great pride in its history. While there are many historic properties in Concord Township, one of the most prized is that of the Polecat Road House, part of the old Trimble Mill Estate. William Trimble (1705-1795) purchased these 50 acres of land between U.S. Route 1 and Cheyney Road from Thomas West in 1737, and constructed a two-story stone house. The two-story stone house is now part of the Newlin Grist Mill, which had an operating mill by 1704. By the time of his death, William had also built a stone kitchen, a stone smokehouse, a springhouse, a frame barn, a saw mill, and a 1.5 story tenant house, now known as the Polecat Road House. William died in 1795 and passed his estate onto his grandson, also named William. William Jr. (1766-1842) immediately built a paper mill and ran both mills until 1813. Trimble Mill was leased in 1813 by John D. Carter, who transformed the paper and saw mills into a cotton factory. Carter ran the Trimble cotton factory until 1826, spinning 750 pounds of cotton yarn weekly. The factory was leased to Jacob Taylor and later to Joseph Trimble, and “many others” who are unnamed in records. In March of 1873, the factory was destroyed by fire and the property was sold to General Robert Patterson. General Patterson died, and his estate sold the factory and land to George Rush in 1884. Rush already owned a number of properties in the Village of Concord, where he lived and worked as a merchant. He planned to rebuild the mills with the intention of building a roller skate factory. Rush’s son, George C. Rush, did in fact have a patent for Rush Roller Skates that he acquired in 1879. It is unclear if the Rushes ever manufactured roller skates on this site, though the 1880 census lists George C. Rush as “skate manufacturer.” In 1914, James Getty acquired this property, demolished the factory, and used the land for farming. Rush Roller Skates Patent Throughout all owners of this property, the Polecat Road House survived. Based on the understanding that the Polecat Road house was built between 1737 and 1795, it is amazing this gem remained. The Polecat Road house is a beautiful example of how working class tenant families lived. It has a simple rectangular shape with a partition in the center to accommodate two families (partition since removed during renovations). There are stairways at either end of the house extending from the basement to the second floor loft and two corner fireplaces built in the Swedish style, where the fireplace rests on logs instead of stones. The house remained occupied for the better part of the 20th century before the surrounding acreage was developed. Today, the Polecat Road House is surrounded by private homes, part of the Fox Valley housing development. How was an historic home saved from demolition by developers? And what did this historic landmark start? Stay tuned for our next installment of History Unlocked in February 2017. References Case, Robert P. and Virginia M. DeNenno. 1998. Concord Township: Progress and Prosperity in the Nineteenth Century. Kutztown, Pennsylvania: The Kutztown Publishing Co. pp. 111-112 East Coast Geneaology. 2016. Trimble Mills (aka Felton Mills). Accessed: 12/1/16. http://eastcoastgenealogy.com/delaware-county/trimble-mills-aka-felton-mills ** Note on this: This site cites Ashmead’s history, but it is actually almost word for word from John W. Jordan’s A History of Delaware County and its People, Vol I., page 343. Jordan, John W. 1914. A History of Delaware County and its People, Vol I. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, pp. 343. Unknown Author. 1991. The Polecat Road House. Pamphlet. U.S. Government. 1880. 10th Census of the United States of America: Pennsylvania Vol. 32 Delaware (cont.), pp. 715