The Scholfields, however, were not to be the first to introduce mechanical wool carding into America. Several attempts had been made prior to their arrival. In East Hartford, Connecticut, "about 1770 Elisha Pitkin had built a mill on the east side of Main Street near the old meeting-house and Hockanum Bridge, which was run by water-power, supplied by damming the Hockanum River. Here, beside grinding grain and plaster, was set up the first wool-carding machine in the state, and, it is believed, in the country."[6] Samual Mayall in Boston, about 1788 or 1789, set up a carding machine operated by horse power. In 1791 he moved to Gray, Maine, where he operated a shop for wool carding and cloth dressing.[7] Of the machines used at the Hartford Woolen Manufactory, organized in 1788, a viewer reported he saw "two carding-engines, working by water, of a very inferior construction." They were further described as having "two large center cylinders in each, with two doffers, and only two working cylinders, of the breadth of bare sixteen inches, said to be invented by some person there."[8] But these were isolated examples; most of the woolen mills of this period were like the one built in 1792 by John Manning in Ipswich, Massachusetts, where all the work of carding, spinning, and weaving was still performed by hand. The Scholfields' knowledge of mechanical wool-processing was to find a welcome reception in this young nation now struggling for economic independence. The exact reason for their decision to embark for America is unknown. However, it may well be that they, like Samuel Slater[9] some three years earlier, had learned of the bounties being offered by several state legislatures for the successful introduction of new textile machines.