A BRIEF OUTLINE HISTORY OF WALKER'S MILL
Report from Hagley Foundation and Library

 

Between 1813 and 1815 Joseph B. Sims, a Philadelphia merchant, built a cotton spinning mill and four two-story workmen's dwellings at Rising Sun on Brandywine Creek, in Brandywine Hundred, on land purchased from Peter Bauduy.

The mill was name Simsville Cotton Factory, and the row of small back-to-back stone houses was called Simsville. Workers had to live close to the mills for in those days public transportation was unknown and mill workmen could not afford horses and carriages.

As soon as it was completed, the Simsville mill was leased to John Siddall & Co. for the manufacture of "cotton yarn, muslin, check, and plaid." In 1820, according to the U.S. Census for that year, Siddall employed 61 persons and processed about 1500 pounds of cotton per week. But the competition from imported British goods, combined with severe damage from one of the periodic freshets that flooded the Brandywine, forced him out of business in 1823. His machinery was sold at public auction and Sims advertised the mill for rent or sale.

As the mill increased its operations under a succession of lessees from the 1820s to the 1860s, more banks of dwellings were erected to house the growing number of employees. The name "banks" was commonly used to describe rows of homes erected against the bank or slope of a hill. Farther upstream at the Louviers Woolen Mill was Charles' Banks which housed some of the Upper Yard of the Du Pont Company's powder mills were workmen's homes known as the Upper Banks.

The Du Pont Company acquired the Simsville Mill and houses on November 15, 1840 when Alfred du Pont, who had succeeded his father as head of the company, bought the property at a sheriff's sale.

Some time in the late 1840s the mill came to be known as Walker's Mill and the dwellings as Walker's Bank houses because a Joseph Walker leased the property from this time until about 1880. Though other names have been given to this small textile manufacturing community, the Walker name has persisted to identify both the mill and the banks of houses.

In 1881 Barlow & Thatcher took over the operation of the mill for the manufacture of fine cotton yarn. From about 1904 until sometime in the 1930s it was run by Hodgson Bros. It then became a storage facility for the Du Pont Co., who gave it to the Eleutherian Mills - Hagley Foundation in 1955 for use as an exhibits laboratory.

Other references:

Boatman, Roy, "The Brandywine Cotton Industry" (research report)