Front:
MILL GROVE AS IT APPEARED DURING THE OPERATION OF THE LEAD MINE
Photo Courtesy New York (City) Historical Society
Back:
The First Home in America of John James Audubon
Near Audubon Village, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
The painting of Mill Grove Plantation by Thomas Birch 1779-1851 shows the dam breast
across Perkiomen Creek, beyond which flowed the mill race, furnishing water power to
turn the grist mill wheel, described by F. H. Herrick in 1914 as of wood and iron twelve
feet in diameter and fifteen feet wide. This wheel provided power not only to turn the
stones grinding the wheat and corn in the grist mill, and the circular saw in the lumber
mill, but also transmitted power by means of the trestle supports shown, to the shaft of
the lead mine deep down under the shale of the hillside.
A newspaper of November 17, 1804 printed the news of the discovery of a lead
mine on the Perkiomen. Nearby was the shaft of the first copper mine in America.
Attempts to operate the mine were made during the residence of John James Audubon.
In 1813 Mill Grove Plantation was purchased by Samuel Wetherill because of these
mines, and shortly thereafter the Smelting Works shown in the Birch painting was erected.
The ore yielded 75% lead with some iron, copper, zinc and a trace of silver.
The entrance is marked by a sign on the trail.
The historic plantation was purchased in 1951 from the Wetherill family by the
Commissioners of Montgomery County. The Commissioners and the Montgomery
County Park Board have established at Mill Grove a National, State and County
Audubon Shrine and a wild life sanctuary.
County Commissioners: Elkins Wetherill, Warren M. Cornell, Jr., Daniel T. Costello.
Parks Director: Russell S. Knipe.
