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- HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY, PA
Chapter XXXI
Birmingham Township.
Francis Chadsey, or Chads, as the name afterwards came to be written, - now frequently and improperly spelled Chadd, - emigrated from Wiltshire, England, early in 1689, with his wife, and resided at or near Chichester until about 1696, when his name appears on the list of taxables for Birmingham. It is presumed that he located on the five hundred acres surveyed to Henry Bernard, or Barnet, early in March, 1684, and conveyed to Daniel Smith, March 28, 29, 1686, which tract included all the present village of Chad's Ford. Francis Chads did not, however, acquire title to the estate until Nov. 24, 1702, and on May 4th of the following year he purchased one hundred and eleven acres adjoining his estate to the southeast, from Edmund Butcher. Chads served as a member of the Assembly from Chester County for the years 1706 and 1707, and about that time, it is believed by Gilbert Cope, he erected his corn-mill, the first in Pennsylvania, on the Brandywine, for dying in 1713 he devised to one of his sons "a half share in my corn-mill." This mill, which is supposed to have been a log building, was permitted to go to decay, until in time its very site was forgotten; indeed, that it had ever existed passed out of the memory of man, until in 1860 in making the excavations for the foundations of the brick mill erected by Caleb Brinton, a short distance west of the station of the Baltimore Central Railroad, at Chad's Ford a log with an old wrought-iron spike was found, with other evidences establishing the location of Chads' mill. That this was the first mill on the Brandywine, as is frequently asserted, cannot be successfully maintained, for as early as May 17, 1689, a petition of "ye Inhabitants of Brandywine River or Creek against ye dam made upon ye creek, wch hinders ye fish passing up to ye great damage of ye inhabitants,"1 shows conclusively that a mill of some kind had then been erected. We know that twenty years before Chads' mill was built, on April 2, 1667, "Cornelius Empson's petition Concerning a Bridg Road and Water mill on Brandywine Creek was Read."2 This mill, however, was in Delaware.
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1670 - 1713 (~ 43 years)