File:Bulletin - United States National Museum (1959) (20513903241).jpg

Title: Bulletin - United States National Museum
Identifier: bulletinunitedst2181959unit (find matches)
Year: 1877 (1870s)
Authors: United States National Museum; Smithsonian Institution; United States. Dept. of the Interior
Subjects: Science
Publisher: Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, (etc. ); for sale by the Supt. of Docs. , U. S. Govt Print. Off.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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Figure y.— In thi; Coi.i.f.ction of the Hk.nrv Ford Misf.um, Dearborn, Michigan, Is liiis Original Scholfield Wool-Carding Machine of the early iglh century. (Photo courtesy of the Henry Ford Museum.) expense of transporting machines llu- hunclnd odd miles to Montvillc. However, John Scholficld's sons reported '" that they had taken a carding engine with them when they moved to Connecticut in 1799 and had later transferred it to a factory in Stonington. The sons claimed that the frame, cylinders, and lags of the machine were made of mahogany and that it had originally been imported from England. How- ever, it would have been most uncommon for a textile machine, even an English one, to have been con- '" R. C. Taft, Some notes upon the introduction of the woolen manu- faetuie into the United Slates, Providence, 1882, pp. 17-18. The Scholfield sons, of whom three were still living in the 1880's, were quite elderly at the time Taft talked to them; only James, aged 98, would have been able to remember the Connecticut striictcd of mahogany; and having built successful carding machines, the men at Byfield would have found it unnecessary to attempt the virtually impos- sible feat of importing an English one. If it ever existed and was taken to Connecticut, therefore, this machine was probably not a carding machine manu- factured by the Scholfields. It is more probable that the first Scholfield carding machine remained in the Byfield mill as the property of the Newburyport Woolen Manufactory. During the next half century, this mill was held by a number of individuals. \Villiam Barllett and Moses Brown, two of the leading stockholders of the com- pany, sold it in 1804 to John Lees, the English over- seer who succeeded the Scholfields, and he continued to operate it for about 20 years. On .August 24, 1824, 10 BULLETIN 218: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY .AND TECHNOLOGY

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