William Rittenhouse

William Rittenhouse (1644 – 1708) was an American papermaker and businessman. He served as an apprentice papermaker in the Netherlands and, after moving to the Pennsylvania Colony, established the first paper mill in the North American colonies, helping to meet the growing demand for paper among the Early American publishers and printers. Rittenhouse was also the first Mennonite bishop in America. Along with his two sons, and their descendants, the Rittenhouse family maintained a papermaking business in Pennsylvania for well over one hundred years. The site of the original mill is now preserved as the Historic RittenhouseTown district of Philadelphia. Early life William Rittenhouse was born Wilhelm Rettinghaus or Rittinghaus, in 1644 at the small village of Broich, just outside of Mülheim on the Ruhr River in the Ruhr region of Germany. He was the son of Claus Rittinghausen and Maria Hagerhoff. He belonged to a distinguished family of which various members held prominent standings in public and professional life. Several of his paternal ancestors were also papermakers in Holland and Germany. During his stay in the Netherlands he changed his name to "Willm Rittenhuysen". This name was also found on a petition dated 7 May 1691 for naturalization of residents of Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was raised in a German-speaking household prior to his removal to the Netherlands where he remained for more than twenty years (from the early 1660s until his departure for Pennsylvania in 1688). He married Geertruid Pieters of Eerbeek, a Dutch woman, in 1665, and most likely became accustomed to speaking a second language. Their marriage produced a daughter, Elizabeth, and a son, Nicholas (also referred to by some as Claus), who also, along with his son, became papermakers continuing the family business into the 1800s. As a young man, William Rittenhouse was an apprentice papermaker in Germany where he learned the Dutch ways of papermaking while living with his brother in the Netherlands, before emigrating to the Pennsylvania Colony in 1688. Two years later he founded the first paper mill to be established in the colonies. This Rittenhouse Mill became the family business for the next century. At the age of 44 Rittenhouse moved to the British colonies in America for reasons that remain unclear, but the pursuit for a better livelihood and business opportunity was a constant factor to all immigration during that era.