Builders' Stories

Thomas Potts (millwright)

Many mysteries surround the millwrights of early America.  They were among the most transient of building tradesmen, for sound reasons: they needed to go where the work was, which meant a different millsite every few years, usually miles from their previous residence.  One such man was Thomas Potts.  It would seem that he was Thomas, Jr., son of a Thomas Potts, Sr. who emigrated to Pennsylvania and died there in the 1690s.  Whether this genealogical connection is accurate may still remain to be shown.  The death of the father, though, seems to have emancipated the son at a very young age.

Pennsylvania historians tend to think that a Thomas Potts (1680-1752) who was actively involved in the Colebrookdale, Pennsylvania ironworks from ca.1720 onward was a different man from a Thomas Potts who was active in New Jersey before that year.  I’m not convinced.  A clue to perhaps where he learned millwrighting comes from the March 1708/9 probate record of Burlington County, New Jersey millwright Joshua Newbold.  Newbold had been active in Chesterfield Township, Burlington County since at least 1696, which suggests that perhaps he trained Potts.  Perhaps the two men worked on projects together.  There is also other circumstantial evidence that Potts was working in this northern Burlington County area during the years 1698-99.

He then had a sojourn in Bristol, followed by a few years in Germantown and then Philadelphia.  In January 1699/1700, a Thomas Potts bought 100 acres in Bristol from one Jacob Shoemaker, a turner (lathe operator) of Bristol, Potts “being under the age of 21 at the time of the conveyance.” Potts sold a part interest in it with “a corn mill or mills Lately Erected” to a Philadelphia merchant in October 1702 for £400, according to one deed.  It is unclear when he moved to Germantown, but in April 1703 one deed stated that he was the former owner of 135 acres there.  In April 1707 another deed stated that he was “late of Germantown and now of Philadelphia."  He was awarded his freedom of the city in 1705, upon paying the prescribed rate of 22 and one half shillings.

What he did for the next few years is unclear at this time, but he apparently used his Quaker connections to good effect in New Jersey.   In 1712 Potts and a carpenter, Joseph Chapman, also apparently a Quaker, were hired to build a mill at Stony Brook (in today’s Princeton) near the Friends’ meeting there, one of the Chesterfield Friends Monthly Meeting’s satellite preparative meetings.  One of the other men who had helped prepare Newbold’s inventory was Nathan Allen, who about 1716 became a millowner at Allentown just a few miles north of Chesterfield, well within the area served by the Chesterfield monthly meeting.  Indeed, a prior or existing Quaker affiliation connects all these men.

It is unclear what Potts did before 1720, when historians of Pennsylvania’s iron industry suggest that he was one of the founders of the Colebrookdale furnace in 1720 (he would operate the furnace for most of the remaining years before his death in 1752).  In 1728 Potts sold a mill in Mansfield Township, Burlington County, just to the south of Chesterfield.  Where it was located is unknown to me, but there remains a “Potts Mill Road” there to this day.  The facts presented here argue for the proposition that the two Thomas Potts were the same man.  It is unusual, however, to find so much surviving record about a single millwright.

John Paine 

John Paine was one of the earlier building tradesmen to settle in Virginia’s Rappahannock County.  He received a patent in 1655 for 940 acres on the north side of the Rappahannock River, only to assign the property seven years later to a local merchant.  By 1665 he was sufficiently well-off that he had been selected to become a vestryman for his local Anglican church in the parish of Farneham, when he signed an agreement for the support of its minister.  In one 1671 record, he was identified as both a “gentleman” and a “carpenter,” meaning that even though he was prosperous enough to no longer need to work for his livelihood, that he continued to practice his trade anyway.

Thomas Maddison  

With one other man, Virginia carpenter Thomas Maddison received a patent from Governor William Berkeley for 606 acres on the north side of Rappahannock County in 1663.  He evidently had some working relationship with two local men, Richard White and George Vinson, who both were sawyers, though White was more often identified as a cooper.  As a carpenter, Maddison may have relied on both men, either as suppliers of sawn lumber or for on-site construction labor.  In 1670 he witnessed a deed in which both men bought land from a local planter.  The following year, Maddison himself sold White and Vinson another 150 acres.  This sale probably helped him finance his major purchase when in the same month he bought nearly 1200 acres from two other planters.  Unfortunately for him, however, he didn’t have long to enjoy his new, large estate.  Maddison signed his last will and testament in October 1674, where he gave further evidence of a friendship with White.  He admitted that he had still not properly deeded to White the land that he’d sold him, but he made White one of his three executors, and left him his “short gun” as a personal gift.