Slater, Samuel, 1768–1835, American pioneer in the cotton textile industry, b. Derbyshire, England. As an apprentice and later a mill supervisor, he gained a thorough knowledge of all the cotton-manufacturing machinery then in use. Drawn by the bounties offered for the encouragement of the textile industry in America, he left England in disguise, since the emigration of textile workers was forbidden, and reached New York in 1789. In 1790 he went to Providence, R.I., where he met Moses Brown Brown, Moses, 1738–1836, American manufacturer and philanthropist, b. Providence, R.I. He was associated with his brothers John, Joseph, and Nicholas in the family's mercantile activities before establishing (1790), with Samuel Slater , the first water-powered
..... Click the link for more information. and contracted to reproduce the complicated machinery for the firm of Almy and Brown, to which his name was soon added. This he accomplished by a remarkable feat of memory, because all attempts to obtain English models, by purchase or smuggling, had been futile. The first mill was replaced by another in 1793, at nearby Pawtucket. In 1798 he formed an additional partnership, with his relatives by marriage, called Samuel Slater and Company, and built another mill near Pawtucket, R.I. He later established mills at Slatersville (now in the town of North Smithfield), R.I., and elsewhere in New England, becoming very prosperous. He exercised strict but paternal supervision over his employees.

Bibliography

See biographies by G. S. White (1836, repr. 1967) and E. H. Cameron (1960); W. R. Bagnall, Samuel Slater and the Early Development of Cotton Manufacture in the United States (1890).

Slater, Samuel

(born June 9, 1768, Belper, Derbyshire, Eng.—died April 21, 1835, Webster, Mass., U.S.) British-born U.S. industrialist. Initially apprenticed to a partner of Richard Arkwright, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1789, where he reproduced versions of Arkwright's spinning and carding machines from memory and in 1793 established the first successful American cotton mill at Pawtucket, R.I., the first of several plants. He founded the town of Slatersville, R.I. He is regarded as the founder of the U.S. cotton textile industry.

Slater, Samuel (1768–1835) engineer, inventor; born in Belper, England. The son of a yeoman farmer, he received a modest education, then learned about advanced textile machinery as an apprentice. In 1789 he emigrated to the U.S.A. in disguise and under an assumed name, as Britain had banned the export of textile machinery or details about it. Working from memory, he built up-to-date spinning machines for a Rhode Island cotton mill (1793). He established his own manufacturing firm (1798) and he directed several large mill operations.