New Hope Historical Society offers a walking tour, at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 26, to explore the magic of New Hope’s Manchester Valley, where wool, cotton, silk, iron and flour were once produced.
When 31-year-old William Maris arrived in New Hope in 1812, the town had already established itself as a force to be reckoned with for manufacturing in Bucks County. But Maris took the tiny borough to another level altogether. A chief rival of the community’s patriarch, Benjamin Parry, Maris quickly made his mark.
Having purchased the old Heath Mill, the town’s first, Maris expanded the footprint to include a cotton fulling mill and later a silk mill. A few years later he built the Lepanto Mills on what is now Mill Road, producing wool and weaving flax into linen.
Maris married the daughter of one of Bucks County’s wealthiest men, John Beaumont, a business partner of Benjamin Parry. Maris built the Delaware House hotel, now the home of Starbucks, and later partnered with Parry and Lewis Coryell in the construction of the Union Mills.
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