SURNAMES: BERGEY, BREY, CAMPBELL, NICE, POLEY, SMITH, SNYDER The Hearthstone Town and Country Newspaper Pennsburg, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Thursday - October 9, 2003 VALLEY PAST By Larry Roeder KLEINBACH'S MILL Some folks around here might still remember KLEINBACH's Mill. It sat along the Perkiomen just below Snyder Road in Marlborough Township. The mill had a long record of service, and several different names, before it passed into history. The dam erected to feed the millrace still holds back the waters of the Perkiomen and can be seen from Snyder's bridge. As a matter of fact, traces of the millrace can be seen from Route 29. From those clues, it's easy to picture where the mill stood. A hand pump and concrete trough that served the mill still stands along the east side of Perkiomen Avenue (Route 29) between Snyder Road and Perkiomenville. Every time I drive by the man-made monolith, I think of it as a kind of monument to the backbreaking work that went on at that location. As early as 1750, the swift flowing waters of the Perkiomen invited the construction of a variety of mills along its banks. When looking into the history of many of these mills, you can almost envision the changes in time as the operations of the mill itself changed. Before 1784, Jacob NICE built the original grist and sawmill on land he owned just below the mill of Jacob SNYDER. SNYDER's mill was on the Deep Creek, just north of where it intersected with the Perkiomen Creek. NICE sold the property to Daniel SMITH on March 20, 1798. SMITH converted the grist and saw mill into an oil mill and powder mill. On January 23, 1810 Mathew CAMPBELL bought the property and ran the operation as an oil-mill until he sold it to George POLEY on April 1, 1825. POLEY changed the mill into a fulling and carding mill. For those of you not familiar with those terms, Webster defines fulling as "making a garment full as by pleating or gathering." The term carding is "using a wire-toothed brush or machine to disentangle wool or other fibers before spinning." According to Beans 1884 History of Montgomery County, POLEY also manufactured linsey-woolsey, stocking-yarn and other fabrics at the mill. In 1842 POLEY added a four-story brick addition to the mill to expand his pulling operation. The large structure now straddled the millrace with milling operations on both sides! POLEY operated the mill until 1860. Henry BERGEY purchased the property from POLEY and ran it until 1871 when the building was destroyed by fire. The structure was rebuilt using the original walls and fitted up as a grist and planing mill. In 1884 it was still operating as such. When the Perkiomen Railroad was extended from Schwenksville to Green Lane on July 1, 1872 the location of the mill made it a considerable source of trade and freight for the iron horse business. Sometime between 1884 and 1902, E.S. BREY bought the mill property and conducted a coal and feed business there. In 1902 Fred K. KLEINBACH went to work for BREY at the mill. Three and-a-half years later, BREY took KLEINBACH on as a partner. When BREY died in 1918, KLEINBACH took over ownership of the business. In addition to milling, KLEINBACH bought and sold a variety of commodities. You could buy hay, straw, feed, coal and even horses at KLEINBACHs. According to my down-Valley history source Ken KLEINBACH (who happens to be Fred's son), there were periods "when 50 to 60 carloads of straw and hay were shipped each year to cities like Allentown and Reading for use in their firehouses." The hay and straw were baled on the west of Route 29. Tracks laid across Route 29 allowed the bales to be ferried across the street on small pushcarts to be loaded onto railroad cars. >From time to time, Fred would purchase draft horses, break them in and sell them to city fire departments to pull their steam engines, ladder wagons and hose carts. The horses were kept in a barn on the west side of Route 29, and led across the street to quench their thirsts at the water trough that still stands by the highway. The KLEINBACH Mill passed into history when it was tore down in the 1950's. But the evidence of its existence and value to a growing region reminds us of the thriving businesses that operated at that location for nearly 150 years.