Papermaking in the Revolutionary era
Because a sheet of paper was made from the particles of thousands of rags that were shredded, pulped, and reconstituted into a single sheet, and because those rags were often collected from the homes of those living near the mills, the sheet of paper came to be seen as a concrete manifestation of the body politic. Put simply, one could say of both the nation and the sheet of paper: e pluribus unum, that is, out of many, one.
from The Intimacy of Paper in Early and Nineteenth-Century American Literature by Jonathan Senchyne
Paper is a miracle substance in which thousands of discrete but similarly composed fibers are held together by chemical bonds of cellulose and water.
Most paper we use today is made of wood fiber and recycled paper, chemically altered to become paper pulp. Prior to wood pulp, paper was made from mashing cotton, linen, or hemp cloth into a pulp, reducing these cloths to their smallest essence as plant fibers. When cellulose fibers are mashed in water, the molecular structure of the glucose breaks and then is reformed as the paper dries. This is what holds all these fibers together to make a sheet of paper.
Through the nineteenth century, the cloth used to make paper pulp came from human castoffs. Many writers, historians, and thinkers have explored with delight the fundamental and at times sensual and/or disgusting human connection between old rags and handmade paper. To donate cloth for the purpose of papermaking meant that the rag was so used that it was no longer functional as cloth, having lived a long life in many permutations.
The rag collector is an important public figure whose place in history goes back to the Middle Ages (Feikert). Printers like John Dunlap collected rags.
In colonial times, rag donation became a sign of patriotism and support for the independence and freedom from England. Women and domestic labors controlled which cloth was ready to be collected, and advertisements targeted their interests. The price paid for rags varied. Some papermills offered instead credit for new clothing, tea, soap, and of course, paper (Leonard).
From the North Carolina Gazette, November 14, 1777:
As this undertaking is Novel, saving of Rags may perhaps be thought too trifling, and below the Notice of the good Matrons of the State, but when they consider they are aiding and assisting in necessary Manufacture, and when the Young Ladies are assured, that by sending to the Paper Mill an old Handkerchief, no longer fit to cover their snowy Breasts, there is a Possibility of its returning to them again in the more pleasing form of a Billet Doux from their Lovers, the Proprietors flatter themselves with great Success. . . .
Isaiah Thomas' advertisement in The Massachusetts Spy, October 18, 1779:
It is earnestly requested that the fair Daughters of Liberty in this extensive Country would not neglect to serve their country, by saving for the paper-mill in Sutton, all Linen & Cotton and Linen Rags, be they ever so small, as they are equally good for the purpose of making paper, as those that are larger. A bag hung up in one corner of the room, would be a means of saving many which would otherwise be lost. If the ladies should not make a fortune by this piece of economy, they will at least have the satisfaction of knowing they are doing an essential service to the community, which with twelve pence per pound, the price now given for clean white rags, they must be sensible will be sufficient reward. Cash given for Rags by I. Thomas.
In the 18th century, cloth was a precious commodity, as was paper. At the start of 1776, there was very little imported paper left in the colonies. Recognizing that it was hard to have a government or currency without paper, the Continental Congress prioritized support for the establishment and maintenance of papermaking, even exempting people involved in the papermaking craft from fighting in the war.
Eugenie Andruss Leonard recounts the realization of the importance of papermakers in her article Paper as a Critical Commodity during the American Revolution:
On July 19, 1776, the Continental Congress passed a resolution "that the paper makers in Pennsylvania be detained from proceeding with the associators to New Jersey," where patriots were joining the armed forces. In the following month the Continental Congress faced an emergency in the shortage of paper for currency. The stock of paper at the Ivy Mills, built by Thomas Willcox and Thomas Brown in 1729 near Philadelphia, on which the Continental currency had been printed, was entirely exhausted. Even more serious was the fact that the English-made paper molds used at the Ivy Mills were so badly worn as to be worthless. Nathan Sellers was the one man on whom Willcox depended to reface the paper molds, and a search for him revealed the fact that he had joined the Army and was on his way to Long Island. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, several paper makers joined Willcox in a petition to the Continental Congress asking that Sellers be ordered to return to construct the necessary molds and other tools of the trade. The petition was granted, and Sellers returned home on September first. Two days later he was busy brassing and watermarking the molds for Willcox's Ivy Mills. The emergency led to the decision of the Continental Congress to own the molds upon which the paper for the currency was made, and Sellers was therefore hired directly by the Congress to prepare them.
Each sheet of paper was made by hand, pulling a screen sandwiched between wooden frames (called a mould and deckle) through a vat of paper pulp.
After returning from the battlefield at the age of 25, Nathan Sellers went on to make all the screens, moulds, and deckles for the first 50 years of American papermaking. His last letter, six years before his death, begs for retirement: “…I have been obliged to retire from an active business in the City, and to seek rest and quiet to my Brain, in the country, and there to guard by every means in my power, such as frequent bleeding, temperance and avoiding ardent thinking, against the recurrence of such strokes. I am too much of a Wreck to engage in this important business…” (Hunter)
If you haven’t made paper before, it is a strenuous, full body activity. I have been able to pull 50 sheets 18 x 24 sheets a day before becoming too exhausted. Tim Barrett, an expert in papermaking, tried to pull 200 sheets in a day, as most pre-industrial paper mills did. You can read the results of his failed attempt in this blog post, “Early Renaissance Paper” on the American Printing History Association. If you’d like to try papermaking out, come visit Common Press in April 2026 at Historic Rittenhouse Town,
The Dunlap Broadside Paper
Knowledge of the source of paper for the Dunlap broadsides comes from Declaration scholar Frederick Richmond Goff’s examination of 21 copies of the remaining copies. Watermarks indicating that the majority of paper was imported from the Dutch papermills (Goff), which became increasingly popular during the revolution (Senchyne).
Watermarks are raised wire designs sewn onto the papermaking screen, creating a ghost image in the sheet of paper that can only be seen when the sheet is held up to light. Each papermill had its own watermark as a branding symbol.
Although we will never know, I like to imagine that some of the lost copies of the Dunlap broadside were printed on paper made in Philadelphia, from cloth collected from the community: cloth that had been rendered unusable because of human use, then repurposed into paper that was the substrate for lofty words demanding the unified freedom and independence of a large population. E pluribus unum, that is, out of many, one.
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Works Cited:
Feikert, Clare. “Regulating the Rag and Bone Man.”
In Custodia Legis Law Librarians of Congress Blog, August 8, 2017. blogs.loc.gov/law/2017/08/regulating-the-rag-and-bone-man/
Goff, Frederick R. The John Dunlap Broadside: The First Printing of the Declaration of Independence. Library of Congress, 1976
Hunter, Dard. Papermaking in Pioneer America. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
Leonard, Eugenie Andruss . “Paper as a Critical Commodity during the American Revolution.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 74, no. 4, 1950, pp.488– 99.
“Paper in Philadelphia City.” Paper Mill and Wood Pulp News vol. 25, no. 7, February 15, 1902, pp. 42–52.
Senchyne, Jonathan. The intimacy of Paper in Early and Nineteenth-Century American Literature. University of Massachusetts Press, 2019.
North Carolina Gazette, November 14, 1777
The Massachusetts Spy, October 18, 1779