When Robert Heath purchased 1,000 acres in what is now New Hope from William Penn around 1707, he agreed to build a mill and a community as part of Penn’s effort to accommodate the growing number of settlers arriving from England.
Heath constructed a grist mill on Sugan Road near York Road to process wheat and corn for farmers in and around the small village, thus launching New Hope’s future as a prominent mill town.
Soon after he arrived in town in the 1730s, Ichabod Wilkinson built a rolling and slitting mill, producing nails, saw blades, hinges, and the like. It was downstream from Heath’s mill at the intersection of the Aquetong Creek and the aqueduct carrying the Delaware Canal.
Later, in 1763, Philip Atkinson built the Hope Flour Mill along the Delaware River, a couple of hundred yards east of the Wilkinson mill, later purchased by Benjamin Parry.
When it burned down in 1790, Parry rebuilt it, renaming it the New Hope Flour Mill — eventually giving the town, then known as Coryell’s Ferry, its new name. Parry expanded his business in New Hope, adding a saw mill, lumber mill and flaxseed oil mill along the river.
William Maris arrived on the scene around 1812, and soon added a string of mills along the Aquetong Creek. His woolen mill, constructed around 1816, still stands today, housing condominiums on Old Mill Road.
Its twin flax mill — later owned by Symington Phillips, who manufactured rope and twine there — was destroyed by fire. But, more than a century later, a magnificent fieldstone home was built on its foundation using stones from the original mill.
Maris soon added a cotton mill along the south side of the creek, and a hotel in the center of town at East Bridge and North Main streets.
In 1817, Maris partnered with Lewis Coryell, Joseph Murray and Benjamin Parry to build the Union Mills, originally consisting of a grist mill and a sawmill on the Delaware River at the southern edge of town. It later became the Ball Lock Company and the Agricultural works, owned by William and Charles Crooks. In 1875, James Patton produced barytes and chemicals for coloring calicoes there.
Then, in 1880, the mammoth Union Mills Paper Company expanded the footprint of the original Union Mills, supplying heavy-duty paper to the Union Camp Bag Company, which located its manufacturing plan across town in what is now Union Square, becoming the largest and most prosperous business in New Hope. It operated for more than a century, employed 115 workers, and boasted an annual payroll that exceeded $1 million.
The upscale Waterview and Water Works Condominiums now occupy the site of the Union Paper Mill.
Three centuries after Robert Heath built the first mill in New Hope on Sugan Road, a historic marker preserves its memory, and Benjamin Parry’s grist mill provides a home for the legendary Bucks County Playhouse.
The mills led the way in making New Hope the manufacturing and industrial capital of Bucks County in the 19th century.
Roy Ziegler is the New Hope Historical Society’s historian and a member of its board of directors.
“Heralding Our History” is a weekly feature. Each month, the Herald delves into the history of one of its towns.
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