The Scholfield Wool-Carding MachinesCooper, Grace Rogers
History
The Scholfield Wool-Carding Machines
Cooper, Grace Rogers
Wool-carding
Both John and Arthur were experienced in the manufacture of woolens.
They were the sons of a clothier (during the 18th century, a person who
performed the several operations in finishing cloth) and had been
apprenticed to the trade. Arthur was 36 and a bachelor; John, a little
younger, was married and had six children. Arthur and John, with his
family, sailed from Liverpool in March 1793 and arrived in Boston some
two months later. Upon arrival, their immediate concern was to find a
dwelling place for John's family. Finally they were accommodated by
Jedediah Morse, well-known author of _Morse's geography and gazetteer_,
in a lodging in Charlestown, near Bunker Hill. In less than a month John
began to build a spinning jenny and a hand loom, and soon the
Scholfields started to produce woolen cloth. The two brothers were
joined in the venture by John Shaw, a spinner and weaver who had
migrated from England with them. Morse, being much impressed with some
of the broadcloth they produced, was especially interested to find that
John and Arthur understood the actual construction of the textile
machines. Morse immediately recommended the Scholfields to some wealthy
persons of Newburyport (see fig. 7), who were interested in sponsoring a
new textile mill.
[Illustration: Figure 8.--CROSS-SECTION OF A SCHOLFIELD WOOL-CARDING
MACHINE. The wool was fed into the machine from a moving apron, locked
in by a pair of rollers, and passed from the taker-in roller to the
angle stripper. This latter roller transferred the wool on to the main
cylinder and acted as a stripper for the first worker roller. After
passing through two more workers and strippers, the wool was prepared
for leaving the main cylinder by the fancy, a roller with longer wire
teeth set to reach into the card clothing of the large cylinder. Then
the doffer roller picked up the carded fibers from the main cylinder in
4-inch widths the length of the roller. These sections were freed by the
comb plate, passed between the fluted wooden cylinder and an under
board, where they were converted into slivers, and deposited into a
small wooden trough.]
The Newburyport Woolen Manufactory
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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