EA.ST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 121 



not proving profitable cotton was substituted for woolen manufacture, 

 and in 1800 its operations entirely ceased. 



In June of this year (1794), the first incorporated woolen factory in Massachusetts 

 AMIS erected, at the falls of the river Parker, in Newbury. The machinery was made 

 in Newburyport, by Messrs. Standring, Armstrong, and Guppy.* 



This factory was run by Arthur Scholfield and other English opera- 

 tives, who recently emigrated in company with Samuel" Slater, the 

 founder of the cotton manufacture in New England, to which use the 

 factory was afterwards converted. 



In recent years claim was made that the first incorporated woolen 

 company to begin business was at Oriskany, N. Y. The claim 

 was disputed and a committee of the " Ehode Island Society for the 

 Encouragement of Domestic Industry " was raised to investigate the 

 subject. The report was in favor of the Newbury company, and em- 

 braced some facts of interest, the substance of which were that, in 

 March, 1793, John Scholfield, with his family, and Arthur, son of Arthur 

 Scholfield, who lived at Standish-foot, in Saddleworth, Yorkshire, 

 England, sailed from Liverpool for the United States, arriving in Boston 

 the May following, and took up their residence in Charlestown, near 

 Bunker Hill. Here they remained until August, making some prepara- 

 tions and constructing some machinery for the manufacture of woolen 

 cloth. Having introduced themselves to Jedediah Morse, author of 

 Morse's Geography and Gazetteer, as being manufacturers, and well 

 skilled in the most approved method of manufacturing woolen goods in 

 England, they were by him introduced to some persons of wealth in 

 Newburyport, who, availing themselves of the knowledge which they 

 possessed, at once put up a factory at Byfield, on the Parker River, 

 near Newbury, under the immediate supervision of John and Arthur 

 Scholfield, and they there constructed the first carding machine for 

 wool that was put in operation in the United States. This was con- 

 structed and first operated by hand, before the factory was ready to 

 receive it. When all the machinery was constructed according to their 

 direction, the factory went into operation, and John Scholfield was 

 employed as an agent, and the business was conducted prosperously. 

 This was the first woolen factory erected and conducted advantageously 

 in the United States, all previous attempts having been rendered un- 

 profitable by reason of imperfect machinery. John Scholfield erected 

 other mills in various parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and in 

 1800 Arthur Scholfield removed to Pittsfield, Mass., built a carding 

 machine, and went to carding rolls and manufacturing. Bishop, in his 

 " History of American Manufactures," says that the Byfield factory, 

 probably the largest then in the country, proved unprofitable in the 

 hands of the Scholfields. The shares were one by one transferred to 

 William Bartlett, and by him to John Lee, one of the original company, 

 who, in 1806, converted it into a cotton factory. 



* History of Newbury. Joshua Coffin. 



