510 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
corporation which had been started in 1834 by Samuel Slater, in 
partnership with Thomas J. Hill, to build cotton machinery. 
The Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic 
Industry moved its headquarters several times during the next 25 
years and evidently found the care of the old machines to be some- 
thing of a burden, for in 1880 the Slater machinery was presented to 
the Brown University Museum. A few years later Prof. Jeremiah 
W. P. Jenks, of the university, “believing that these valuable 
instruments marking the beginning of cotton manufacure in America 
should not be immured in a dungeon,” as he described the damp base- 
ment room where the machines were stored, suggested the deposition 
by the society of these relics in the National Museum at Washington. 
After about a year of negotiation with the society, Professor Jenks 
succeeded in having a vote passed at the annual meeting in Janu- 
ary, 1883, that “ The progenitor of all the cotton machinery in the 
country ” be presented to the National Museum at Washington. 
In due time the machinery was packed and sent to the Museum 
by the water route via Norfolk, the Rhode Island Society sending 
at the same time a complete set of implements used in the prepara- 
tion and spinning of flax. It was hoped that the old machines 
had at last found a resting place, but they were fated to do some 
more traveling as later paragraphs will show. 
The Slater machines were loaned by the Smithsonian Institution to 
the State of Rhode Island for exhibition as part of that State’s 
display at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposi- 
tion in New Orleans during the winter of 1884-85. The machines 
were returned to the National Museum in March, 1885, but were only 
allowed a few years’ rest for in 1890 their travels began again, this 
time back to their point of origin. In the meantime, on date of 
July 23, 1888, the National Museum received from J. Erastus Lester, 
of the Rhode Island Society, the original certificate of authenticity 
of the Slater machines signed by Samuel Boyd Tobey, which was 
needed to make the exhibit complete and which had been lost for 
many years. 
In 1890 Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, requested the 
loan of the Slater machines for the Cotton Centenary, a celebration 
by the City of Pawtucket of the one hundredth anniversary of the 
beginning of cotton spinning by power machinery on the Western 
Hemisphere, and on August 5, 1890, the National Museum shipped 
them to Albert R. Sherman, superintendent of exhibits. The 
directors of the industrial exhibition were anxious to have the Slater 
spinning frame actually spin cotton yarn as it had begun to do 100 
years before, so the ancient machine was taken to be put in running 
order to “ Brown’s Machine Shop ” at the corner of Main and Pine 
Streets, where Sylvanus Brown, the grandfather of the proprietor, 
