John  Kelpius, a Bavarian religious leader who espoused millennial and  universalistic doctrines, arrived in Philadelphia in 1694. He and his  followers settled and lived as hermits in small huts in the woods  adjacent to Wissahickon Creek, near Roxborough’s present day Hermit Lane. 5  The hermits conducted religious services in the wooded area overlooking the Wissahickon.6  Kelpius died in the first decade of the eighteenth century, and his followers eventually disbanded. 7  Although the name Roxborough, or Rocksburrow, has been attributed to  Kelpius, who wrote about "foxes burrowing in rocks,” the area was named  by Robeson for his native land, Roxburgh, Scotland.

Brothers Gerhard and Wigard  (Wickert) Levering arrived in Pennsylvania from Holland during the  summer of 1685 and first settled in Germantown. Wigard Levering  purchased 200 acres in Roxborough in 1691 and moved to the area, where  he farmed. He purchased another 300 acres in 1697 in the area that came  to be known as Leverington. He prospered and died a wealthy man in 1744. 8  Wigard’s eldest son William was born in Germany in 1677 and came with  his family to Pennsylvania at the age of eight; he was 15 when his  family moved to Roxborough. In 1717, Wigard gave William a large tract  of land, which consisted of the unsold portions of Wigard’s speculative  land holdings in Roxborough. William was a farmer like his father, but  engaged in other ventures as well. He built the Levering Hotel,  Roxborough’s first hotel, in 1731. He also gave land on which  Roxborough’s first school was built in 1748. 9  He died in 1746, having amassed a valuable estate. 10  Wigard’s son Jacob was the first of his 12 children to be born in  Roxborough. In 1717, Wigard granted Jacob 85 acres of land, which  abutted the along the Schuylkill River in the area of Green Lane,  extending to Levering Street and comprising much of present-day Manayunk. Jacob lived on this land, first in a log cabin, and then in a  stone house that he built in 1736 on the northwest side of Green Lane.  Besides farming, Jacob was also engaged in industrial undertakings. He  owned a distillery in Roxborough and a saw mill on the western side of  the Schuylkill River in what is now Montgomery County. Jacob died in  1753 with an estate valued at the substantial sum. 11

Wilhelm Rittinghausen, born in  1644, learned the papermaking trade in Mulheim, Germany, while working  at his uncle Mathias Vorster’s mill. The two men later went to Holland,  where they were employed in a Gelderland mill near Arnhem. In 1688, Mr.  Rittinghausen, by now a Dutch citizen, immigrated to British North  America and changed his name to William Rittenhouse. In 1690, he  established a paper mill in Roxborough on the Paper Mill Run or  Monoshone Creek, a tributary of the Wissahickon Creek. The mill was  located near the confluence of Paper Mill Run and the Wissahickon, about 1.6 miles above the point where the Wissahickon flows into the  Schuylkill. 12  Joining him in the  venture were three partners, Robert Turner, Thomas Tresse, and a printer  named William Bradford. Rittenhouse developed a successful mill, owing  to his ability to organize financial backers as partners and a  printer-partner as a contractual customer for the products. Previous to  Rittenhouse’s operation, all paper was imported from Europe and taxed  accordingly. The new mill provided a local source of printing, writing,  and wrapping paper, as well as pasteboard. All of the mill’s fiber for  hand papermaking was obtained from discarded rags and cotton. The paper  that came from the Rittenhouse mill during the late seventeenth and  eighteenth centuries was made by hand, each sheet crafted separately.  First, workers pounded rags into pulp in stone or iron mortars using  trip-hammers. After pulp was placed in frames, it needed several days to  dry completely. The final product carried the Rittenhouse watermark. In  1706, Rittenhouse bought out the other partners and became sole  proprietor of Rittenhouse Paper Mill. Rittenhouse proved that  papermaking in America could be a viable, economically sound business.  Rittenhouse died in 1708 and left the paper mill to his son, Claus. The  business prospered at the site, and was operated by six generations of family descendants. Rittenhousetown grew up around the mill. For 20  years, Rittenhouse Paper Mill was the only paper mill in the Colonies.  In 1710, William Dewees, who was married to Claus Rittenhouse’s sister,  built a mill nearby in Chestnut Hill, having learned the trade at  Rittenhouse Paper Mill. In 1729, the Willcox Ivey Mill was built in  Chester County. Forty years after the founding of Rittenhouse Paper  Mill, the number of printers and paper mills grew exponentially. The  Rittenhouse family monopoly in paper was over, but Rittenhouse’s  descendants continued making paper on the Monoshone Creek until the  nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, when the development of the  Fourdrinier, with its endless web and cylinder papermaking, changed the industry forever. 13  Among the many  prominent members of the Rittenhouse family, David Rittenhouse  (1732-1796) was an astronomer, inventor, clockmaker, mathematician, surveyor, fabricator of scientific instruments, and public official. Rittenhouse was a member of the American Philosophical Society and the  first director of the United States Mint. Several eighteenth and  nineteenth-century buildings survive at the Rittenhouse Paper Mill site  including the Rittenhouse Homestead (1707), the Bake House (1725), the  Abraham Rittenhouse Home (1720), and the Enoch Rittenhouse Home (1845)  (Figure 6). The Rittenhouse complex was not included in this thematic  district because of its distance from Ridge Avenue, but it precisely  represents both the early mill culture and early architectural styles in Roxborough Township.14