me wealthy
persons of Newburyport (see fig. 7), who were interested in sponsoring a
new textile mill.

[Illustration: Figure 8.--CROSS-SECTION OF A SCHOLFIELD WOOL-CARDING
MACHINE. The wool was fed into the machine from a moving apron, locked
in by a pair of rollers, and passed from the taker-in roller to the
angle stripper. This latter roller transferred the wool on to the main
cylinder and acted as a stripper for the first worker roller. After
passing through two more workers and strippers, the wool was prepared
for leaving the main cylinder by the fancy, a roller with longer wire
teeth set to reach into the card clothing of the large cylinder. Then
the doffer roller picked up the carded fibers from the main cylinder in
4-inch widths the length of the roller. These sections were freed by the
comb plate, passed between the fluted wooden cylinder and an under
board, where they were converted into slivers, and deposited into a
small wooden trough.]

The Newburyport Woolen Manufactory

A Newburyport philanthropist, Timothy Dexter, contributed the use of his
stable. There, beginning in December 1793, the Scholfields built a
24-inch, single-cylinder, wool-carding machine. They completed it early
in 1794, the first Scholfield wool-carding machine in America. The group
was so impressed that they organized the Newburyport Woolen Manufactory.
Arthur was hired as overseer of the carding and John as overseer of the
weaving and also as company agent for the purchase of raw wool. A site
was chosen on the Parker River in Byfield Parish, Newbury, where a
building 100 feet long, about half as wide, and three stories high was
constructed. To the new factory were moved the first carding machine,
two double-carding machines, as well as spinning, weaving and fulling
machines. The carding machines were built by Messrs. Standring,
Armstrong, and Guppy, under the Scholfields' immediate direction. All
the machinery with the exception of the looms was run by water-power;
the weaving was done by hand. The enterprise was in full operation by
1795.

John and Arthur Scholfield (and John's 11-year-old son, James) worked at
the Byfield factory for several years. During a wool-buying trip to
Connecticut in 1798, John observed a valuable water-power site at the
mouth of the Oxoboxo River, in the town (i.e., township) of Montville,
Connecticut. Here, the brothers decided, would be a good place to set up
their own mill, and on April 19, 1799, the