My GARDNER family started out in Wycombe as papermakers, later moved to the West Drayton area and then to Egham to work in the linoleum factory there. Happy hunting! Diana Robinson Now in Rochester, NY, USA -----Original Message----- From: Eve McLaughlin [mailto:eve@varneys.demon.co.uk] Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2005 6:54 AM To: BUCKS-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [BKM] Rag sorter In message <6b.3f498176.2f495d8f@aol.com>, Microfish7@aol.com writes >Dear Cousins, > >In 1851 census, Flackwell Heath, Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, my ancestor Thomas >Wheeler is listed as a Papermaker. His grandson: a Rag sorter. I had read >(and seen at the University of Iowa a demonstration of some paper-making >techniques) about paper-making but wonder if anyone on the list can suggest >books or >articles on the process as it pertains to mid-19th century Bucks. A man called John Mayes wrote a number of articles and monographs on the papermaking industry and Wycombe (where there were at one time around twenty mills along the little River Wye). I am not sure these were published in book form (or if they were, whether the book is accessible outside Wycombe Library and the British Library and other copyright libraries). There would also have been a slim but very useful volume in the ?Benn series on various industries. It was certainly an important local trade, with many rag sorters (usually females, children or elderly men) providing the raw material which was shredded and pulped, then spread out to be rolled into a homogenous whole (probably what you have seen). The Wycombe paper mills were severely by the early introduction of machinery elsewhere, and set back by the machine-breaking riots of 1830 in the area. One thing to note is that many papermakers, made jobless by the trade depression, went off first to the Kentish mills at St Mary Cray, Foots Cray etc, and later to the flourishing mills at Alton, Hampshire, from which some ret8urned when trade picked up in Wycombe, though others stay put. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society ______________________________