TIP# 182 - EARLY FACTORIES - PAPER MILLS AND GLASS BLOWERS In addition to the individual workman who could work alone or have apprentices with him, the early factories, often referred to as manufactories, we found in not only the large Kentucky towns, but in smaller ones as well. We will take a look at some of them. One of the earliest industries was that of paper making. Paper mills were found early in the Kentucky landscape because of the obvious demand for the product. The process of producing paper was a hard process requiring vast quantities of water. Did you ever wonder why so much of the early paper in America is not pure white? It has a simple explanation - pure water was not easily available. Most paper mills were built beside streams, and with the water they used came the impurities the water it contained. Leaves, rotten wood … all caused a "stained" appearance to the paper. The early paper did not contain any chemicals and yet many survive quite readable to this day - without the harsh chemicals, technology or equipment of today! Paper came from rags gathered by the owner with lines and cotton in primary use until about 1867. As I've indicated earlier, rags were scarce causing the owner to advertise in local papers or by word or mouth. Rewards were sometimes offered to anyone who would provide rags to the papermill! It was so difficult to get the rags that the United States Legislature passed a law in saying that the dead could be buried ONLY in woolen clothes. The paper manufactor experimented constantly with what he hoped would be a good substitute; spanish moss, corn husks, straw, pine cones … even seaweed! But, nothing worked. The paper mill owner employed apprentices, normally young boys, who cut the rags into tiny pieces by using a special scythe. They then wet the cloth and piled them up for a long period of time to cause a rotting process to begin. A series of wooden pestles lifted and dropped by large cams were on the shaft of the water wheel. The first set of cams had coarse iron teeth; the second had finer teeth and the 3rd was just pure flat wood. These pestles landed into mortars hollowed out of stone or oak logs and which were lead-lined. The water flowed into the mortars and escaped through strainers made of horsehair near the upper edges. This created the pulp. Stampers were used by the smaller mills for many years but another invention called a "hollander" came into use. The latter was just a hollow tub, oval shaped and about 8 x 4 in size. Twenty iron knives attached to a wooden drum rotated in the middle on one of the sides. The radius was long enough to let the blades rub against an iron bedplate which was attached to the bottom of the tub; this allowed the rags to be chewed to pieces. Apprentices had to stir the pulp with wooden paddles until a "hog" or agitator was created to take over this chore. Another man, called a moldman, was the one responsible for forming sheets of paper. The process was very detailed and tedius. Once a sheet of paper had been created, it came from the press dripping wet. A boy or man lifted the sheets off the "felts" and stacked them together on a slanted board. He took the felts back to another man called a "coucher" and then took the wet papers over to the dry press. The papers were squeezed to get the water out of them. When dry enough from this step, they were normally taken to a second floor loft. The sheets had a tendency of curling up or wrinkling while getting their last drying, so they were hung in "spurs" - 4 or 5 sheets together over horizontal poles. The man working in the loft was called a "lofter" and had to be sure that the paper dried evenly and with the right amount of dry air blowing over them. If the paper was to be used as stationery, it had to be sized in order to hold the ink. The sizer dipped the sheets into a hot solution of animal glue and re-hung them to dry once more. Usually there was a special room for this step called a Saul. After the writing paper was totally dry, it was beaten with a plating hammer which covered the entire sheet of paper. Later, this step was replaced by large rollers. GLASSBLOWING was an early industry in the United States, dating back to at least 1609 in Jamestown. The major obstacle in the beginning was obtaining fire clay. America didn't have enough, Mother England was not about ready to provide it! The other handicap was finding qualified people in America to learn the technique. People were imported from Rotterdam by Caspar Wistar and for years his was the only glass blowing factory because he swore his employees to secrecy. It is thought that he made the first window glass. But, the other colonial glassmaker's problems were even more severe. He had to have special pots in which to melt the glass. So, he had to create his own pottery before even thinking about making glass. The clay used, called fire clay, HAD to come from Europe and getting it was quite an expensive struggle. The clay was pulverized and stacked outside for a year which allowed it to "ripen." Thus another delay for the new glassblower. When he felt it was ripe enough, he had to "temper" it by adding 1/5th of its own weight of baked clay that had been ground up. He found these materials by scouring the countryside for old pots that had been discarded, or bricks laying around. This mixture had to sit for at least another six months to continue the ripening process. To make one pot large enough to hold 1300 pounds of glass. When the process began, the fires that roared were fired by wood or occasionally coal. The furnaces were always circular, built of brick and lined with blocks of fire clay. Small holes around the walls gave the glass blowers access to the pots of glass they were working on. Glass is created from a combination of sand or ground up flint which is mixed with an alkali or a metallic oxide. The purer the materials the glass blower worked with, the purer and clearer the finished product. Many colonists used "frit" which was green. Window glass had potash as the alkali. Flint glass used pearl ash and powdered flint. The color of the oxide added determined the color of the finished product. It took many people in a glass blowing factory including: A servitor did the actual blowing, and he had many assistants working with him. He could shape the original bubble, evened it up by rolling it on an iron table known as a marver. Another apprentice called a "wetter'off" dipped a blade into cold water and cut the neck of the bottle free. He carried this to a "gaffer" who finished shaping it. He went through many steps to complete his cycle. This was an extremely interesting and complex project of which I have just touched the sufface. © Copyright 15 September 1998, Sandra K. Gorin, All rights reserved, sgorin@glasgow-ky.com Sandi Gorin - A Kentucky Colonel PUBLISHING: http://members.tripod.com/~GorinS/index.html BARREN CO WEBSITE: http://ww4.choice.net/~jimphp/barrenco/ ARCHIVES for ROOTSWEB: http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl KYBIOGRAPHIES: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Ky/Bios KYRESEARCH: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Ky/Tips PRAYER&PRAISE: http://www.listbot.com/subscribe/prayerandpraise