The Old Slater Mill, Pawtucket, RI

August 17, 2016

The Old Slater Mill is considered the birthplace of the cotton manufacturing industry.

The Sylvanus Brown House was built in 1758 and moved here in 1970s.  
Sylvanus Brown was a woodworker, millwright and dam builder. He worked with Samuel Slater by making full size wooden patterns for machine parts.

The Sylvanus Brown House, the oldest building at the Slater Mill Historic Site, is a typical dwelling of the mid-late eighteenth century. A small, solid looking building, the house was moved to this location in the late 1960's. Except for the basement and chimney, the original structure is intact. The sparse furnishings conform to those of Sylvanus Brown's 1824 estate inventory and include a loom, spinning wheel and other tools used to make cloth by hand.

In this house, and others like it, women and children did the slow tedious work of cleaning and carding wool, spinning yarn and weaving cloth. It is interesting to watch this process by hand since the machinery in the Slater Mill duplicates many of the same operations, often with equipment that looks much like the hand tool original.

(taken from www.woonsocket.org)

Our guide demonstrated the loom

Behind the house is the garden where they still grow and harvest vegetables and herbs.

The Wilkinson Mill

The Wilkinson Mill demonstrates the changes in mill design after twenty years of industrial experience. Built in 1810, the building is significantly larger than the original Slater Mill and has exterior walls built of stone to reduce the chance of fire. As it appears today, the mill includes a brick tower added in 1840 and a belfry recreated from an 1870 photograph.

Designed as a cotton mill, it also included a machine shop on the first floor where mechanics built or repaired whatever machinery the mill required. A magnificent waterwheel still provides power to the machines in the machine shop. When built, the mill performed all stages of cloth manufacture except weaving. By 1817, it is likely that weaving was also introduced, possibly on looms built in the mill's own machine shop. (taken from www.woonsocket.org)

The inlet to the water wheel

The water wheel

A forge

Jig Saw

Planer

The machine shop.  I don't remember what all the machines were, but they were pretty cool. They ran using belts wrapped on wheels of different sizes.  The guide would use a pole-like thing to move the belt to the proper wheel.

Drill Press

Bobbin Lathe

Belt wheels

Table Saw

Band Saw

Not the shoes

In 1793, the firm of Almy, Brown, and Slater hired local artisans and laborers to construct a wooden building suitable for manufacturing cotton thread by water power.  Slater Mill became the first successful cotton-spinning factory in the United States. It was dedicated exclusively to the production of cotton thread until 1829.

Samuel Slater

The Slater mill is now a museum to the textile industry.