William Rittenhouse

Along with his two sons, and their descendants, the Rittenhouse family maintained a papermaking business in Pennsylvania for well over one hundred years.

Other residents of importance were Francis Daniel Pastorius, Derick, Herman and Abraham op den Graeff.

[a] He was raised in a German-speaking household prior to his removal to the Netherlands where he remained for more than twenty years (from the early 1660s until his departure for Pennsylvania in 1688).

At the age of 44 Rittenhouse moved to the British colonies in America for reasons that remain unclear, but the pursuit for a better livelihood and business opportunity was a constant factor to all immigration during that era.

[3] William Rittenhouse is widely noted for having established the first paper mill in North America, in 1690, in Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia.

[5][6][7][8][9] Along with a few business associates he rented land owned by Samuel Carpenter with a lease that extended for a term of 990 years.

[12][11] Sometime during the winter of 1700-1701 the wooden structure was destroyed and taken away by violent and sudden flooding of the river, taking with it a sizeable quantity of paper, tools and other materials.

[14] The printer and the papermaker relationship made for an ideal partnership that provided the basis for Rittenhouse to establish his paper mill and the new found industry in a field that had not yet been pursued by anyone else in the colonies.

The second watermark, its size covering nearly the full sheet of paper, consisted of the monogram W R along with half a shield, surmounted by a fleur-de-lis crest, and bearing a clover leaf—which happened to be the town seal of Germantown, and beneath the emblem the word "Pensilvania" was inscribed.

[17][18][f] The newspapers of William Bradford, the New-York Gazette, established in November 1725, and that of his son Andrew Bradford, the American Weekly Mercury, established in 1719 in Philadelphia, were printed on paper produced in the Rittenhouse paper mill, which bore the Rittenhouse watermarks.

Shortly before his death he gave his share in the paper mill to his son Nicholas, who continued with the business until May 1734, when he died.