Wetherill, Samuel, 1736-1816

Samuel Wetherill, a Philadelphia manufacturer of cloth, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, was a birthright Quaker. During the American Revolution, he actively supported the military effort and was disowned from Philadelphia Monthly Meeting in 1779. In 1781, he was a founder of an independent meeting known as the Society of Free Quakers. He corresponded with a New England group of similarly disowned Quakers, associates of Timothy Davis (1730-1798), a respected minister who published a pamphlet in 1776 concerning the payment of taxes to the new government. Davis was disowned in 1778, but was reinstated in 1795.

Samuel Wetherill was a pioneer manufacturer of textiles and chemicals.

Wetherill was born in Burlington, N.J., on April 12, 1736, and came to Philadelphia as a carpenter's apprentice at the age of fifteen. He worked at the carpenter's trade until 1775, when he joined with other Philadelphia merchants, artisans and civic leaders in founding the United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufactures. In the same year he established a weaving factory which supplied cloth to the colonial army until it was closed by the British occupation of Philadelphia. Wetherill was forced by necessity to produce his own dyestuffs and was thus drawn into chemical manufacture.

Wetherill was expelled from the Society of Friends in 1777 after swearing allegiance to the colonial cause and supporting the army. He founded the movement known as Free or Fighting Quakers and preached and wrote on a number of religious issues facing the Society of Friends.

Wetherill established a firm for the manufacture of chemicals in 1785 and produced the first white lead to be made in America in 1790. In 1787 he joined in organizing the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts, a direct descendant of the United Company of 1775. Because of his prior manufacturing experience, Wetherill managed the operations of the Society's Manufacturing Committee, including its experimental cotton factory of 1788-1790. After the Society was dissolved in 1803-04 Wetherill established a permanent factory for the manufacture of white lead which was continued by his descendants. He died in Philadelphia on September 24, 1816.