Joshua Gilpin (paper maker)

Joshua Gilpin (1765–1840) was an American merchant and manufacturer who toured industrial Britain at the very end of the eighteenth century. On his return home (in 1801), he introduced to America the technique of chemically bleaching paper-stuff in 1804 and following his second trip, 1811-1815, his brother, Thomas Gilpin, jr, manufactured in 1817 the first paper-making machine in America.

Joshua Gilpin was born in Philadelphia on 8 November 1765, the son of Thomas Gilpin, a prosperous merchant, and Lydia Fisher, of the well-known Philadelphia family. Both his parents were Quakers. With his brother, Thomas, he inherited from their family property on the Brandywine Creek, and in Wilmington and Philadelphia. They had an extensive business in Philadelphia as general merchants, and on the Brandywine Creek as manufacturers of paper, and woolen and cotton textiles.

The family originated in England and migrated to America at the end of the seventeenth century. They came from Kentmere in Westmorland, and maintained links with their English cousins, including William Gilpin, the artist. Thomas Gilpin owned flour mills in Maryland and on the Brandywine, in Delaware, as well as other properties in Wilmington and Philadelphia. Thomas was a member of the American Philosophical Society, was a correspondent of Benjamin Franklin, and helped establish, in 1771, a grammar school at Wilmington. During the American War of Independence he was suspected of disloyalty and was exiled to Winchester, Virginia, where he died in 1778.

Joshua Gilpin was educated by tutors and at the grammar school at Wilmington. In 1787, Joshua, the younger Thomas, and their uncle, Meirs Fisher, began making paper at a mill on the Brandywine Creek, Delaware, which had been built by their maternal grandfather, Joshua Fisher in 1765. The first paper was despatched in June 1787. The entrepreneurs had help from Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1788, lent Meirs Fisher some French books on papermaking. In time the mills prospered, specialising in banknote paper. The Gilpins supplied many States' banks as well as the United States Treasury.

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