There is an enclave of private homes along Crum Creek in Newtown and Edgmont townships, once a variety of mills for about 200 years. Today the area is called Mill Hollow, but that is a relatively recent development. The buildings are long-time residents of Mill Hollow.
18th century inventions jump-started the large-scale manufacturing of cotton and its products. While most of the technology came from England, the cotton came from the Southern states. Bales arrived at the port in Philadelphia, and were hauled to suburban communities, where the streams were harnessed to turn the water wheels that powered the machinery that cleaned it, picked it, layered and pressed it into thick cotton lap that would then be carded and spun into yarn.
Thomas Johnson is the first mentioned miller in the area in 1799, operating a saw mill. By 1812, George Entriken [Antrican] was operating a distillery and a paper, saw and grist mill. Around 1825, Jonathan Noble Hatch bought the property, installed “ten carding-machines, three hundred and sixty throstle-spindles, seven hundred and eighty mule-spindles,” and began manufacturing cotton thread. Like so many wooden factories of the day, the mill suffered a fire that put Hatch out of business in 1838. An 1840 ad for the property touted a 2-story mansion house, five stone and four frame houses for workers, “the walls of a large stone mill which has been used (until burnt) for a cotton factory,” and a host of other buildings, all on 100 acres.
The buildings sat vacant until around 1855 when Joseph Shimer opened a cotton lap factory; he moved down the creek to the Newtown side a few years later, and the Edgmont site was used as a cotton lap factory by Alfred Hatch, son of Jonathan. By 1903, the mills were long gone, but Alfred and his sister lived in the huge old miller’s house, and he said “if we should travel the wide world over, we’d not find a better place to end our days.” When they died, the property eventually passed to the well-to-do Thayer family, who named the property “Mill Hollow,” renovated the miller’s house and enjoyed the beauty and seclusion of the property from 1929 till about 1990. The property was subdivided into 7 large lots, with further commercial development restricted; Eliza Thayer saying, “It was so beautiful, I thought it would be a shame were it ever developed.”
By Doug Humes