Sweet, Quiet, Rockdale [1]
"There is a village in America called Rockdale where the people used to manufacture cotton cloth. It lies along the banks of Chester Creek in Delaware County, in southeastern Pennsylvania, between Philadelphia and Wilmington. None of the people who worked in the first cotton mills is alive anymore, but some of their children's children still live there, and the ruins of stone factories, as well as stone tenements and fine stone mansions, are yet standing. Nearby are the remains of the other hamlets that made up the Rockdale Manufacturing District — Lenni, Parkmount, West Branch, Crozerville, Glen Riddle, and Knowlton — where cotton yarn was spun on mules and throstles and cloth was woven on looms powered by water wheels. ...
"As I leave my house on the outskirts of the village, drive the car along the roads twisting among the mills, tramp in the weeds by the old dams and races, stroll along the paths in the cemetery at Calvary Church, I sometimes feel I can almost reach out and touch the people I have come to know from their letters and diaries and ledgers, that they are near, behind a thin veil of time. It was just yesterday, just down the road. And it was so far away, so long ago ..."
Nearby Neighborhoods
Street Names
Convent Road • Herald Square • Mount Road • Team Road