 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|||||
|
 |
 |
Biography of Samuel SlaterName: Samuel SlaterBirth Date: June 9, 1768 Death Date: 1835 Place of Birth: Derbyshire, England Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: entrepreneur Samuel Slater The English-born American manufacturer Samuel Slater (1768-1835) built the first successful cotton mill in the United States, in 1790.Samuel Slater was born near Belper in Derbyshire on June 9, 1768, the son of a prosperous yeoman farmer. As a youth, Samuel demonstrated considerable skill as a mechanic, and in school he excelled in arithmetic.Apprenticeship in the Textile TradeThe Slater farm was located near the river Derwent; the first spinning mill driven by water power was built in Cromford on the Derwent in 1771 by Jedediah Strutt and Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the water-frame spinner. In 1776 they dissolved their partnership, and Strutt took over his own mill in Belper, where Slater began his apprenticeship at the age of 14.Although the terms of the indenture were harsh and Slater had to work hard, Strutt treated him kindly. Slater learned to operate all the machinery involved in converting raw cotton into yarn. When the machinery …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…a new firm, Samuel Slater and Company, in 1798. His mill, completed in 1801, was the first in Massachusetts to use the Arkwright system. Slater played an active part in establishing other cotton mills in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. By 1828 he had been involved in 13 different partnerships concerned with processing cotton. Because of his contributions to the cotton industry in the United States, he is often referred to as the father of American manufactures. Further Reading The most readable, though somewhat subjective, biography of Slater is Edward H. Cameron, Samuel Slater; The Father of American Manufactures (1960). George S. White, Memoir of Samuel Slater: The Father of American Manufactures (1836; repr. 1967), is a sympathetic contemporary account of Slater's life; it contains numerous primary documents related to early American manufacturing. See also William R. Bagnall, Samuel Slater and Early Development of Cotton (1890), and, for broad background, Perry Walton, The Story of Textiles (1912). |