In 1819, the new firm of Brayton and Bowers signed an agreement with
the Swansea Paper Manufacturing Company to sell its product. There is
so little known outside the barrel of this paper company that when I
found this contract in the barrel, I was surprised. I consulted the
standard “History of Swansea”.
“Straw paper was manufactured in Swansea in 1840 by William Mitchell”.
That is all the History has to say. But the barrel holds 50 papers, in
addition to this contract of 1819; individual transactions of Brayton
and Bowers with the Swansea Paper Manufacturing Company continuing into
the year 1832. The agent was always William Mitchell. He signed every
document.
Paper was really made out of straw in Swansea and was sold by Brayton
and Bowers to many different firms and individuals. That much is clear.
The paper on which the correspondence of the firm was written, ought to
have been of the firm’s own manufacture. But was it?
The paper may not have been very good. Israel got some returned. Where
did the Swansea Paper Company get its straw? How did it make its paper?
The barrel does not know.
The employees of the Paper Company, like the employees of the Yarn
Factories, were allowed to charge things in Israel’s Scrabbletown
Store. And some of the notes asking for credit for employees and signed
by William Mitchell, are in the barrel, so we know who some of the
paper makers were.
And that seems to be all that we do know about the paper business in
Swansea. It seems to be more than anyone else knows.