Fun in Philadelphia

After Adrians little drive thru New York we thought Philly would be a cake walk, how wrong we were. We came in from the east and it was a nightmare, the roads were tiny and there was traffic everywhere, we eventually got to where we wanted to be and were 500 yards from the customer. Unfortunately there was a raised railroad above the road and we couldnt get thru.

We took a little detour and eventually got to the place with not many minutes to spare.

Here's a little narative i found about the area we went to, Upper Darby.

by Thomas J. DiFilippo
The growth rate of the township changed about
1830 when textile making moved from the homes into mills. Before 1830, the
spinning of yarn and the weaving of cloth was mostly performed at home by the
women and primarily to satisfy the family’s needs. About 1830, some old grist
mills were converted to spin yarn that was sold to individuals who wove their
own crude cloth. About 1840, the mills became “integrated,” meaning they spun
the yarn from raw material, then wove, finished and dyed the cloth. This was the
beginning of a prosperous large textile industry in Upper Darby that lasted into
the mid-1900s.

What became this country’s massive textile industry began in New
England then spread to the Delaware Valley. Philadelphia became a major textile
center with many mills in Germantown, Manayunk, Kensington, and Blockley.
Realizing the potential market for textiles, descendants of the Garretts,
Sellers, and Levis, followed by the Burnleys. Kellys, Kents, and Wolfendens,
built or converted to textile mills. This expansion occurred after the flood of
1843 because that event destroyed nearly everything along the creeks.

Most of the mills employed Immigrants from England, Northern Ireland,
Scotland and later Irish Catholics. Although the managers and skilled workers
were male, the laborious jobs were performed mostly by women and children. The
mills owned the nearby “mill houses” and rented them to their employees. Workers
were expected to follow the politics of the mill owners. Very few owners had
compassion for the workers and thus the working conditions were poor, the
salaries meager and the working hours long. These conditions bred frequent labor
disputes and were the cause of the early child labor laws and
unionization.

As the Upper Darby textile industry grew, so also did the areas of
Kellyville (Oakview), Addingham, Cardington, and to a lesser degree GarrettsFord
(Garrettford).

I thought that was quite nice.