Contributions from

The Museum of History and Technology:

Paper 1

The Scholfield Wool-Carding Machines

Grace L. Rogers

Figure 1.—An Original Scholfield Wool-Carding
Machine, built by Arthur Scholfield or under
his immediate direction between 1803 and 1814, as
exhibited in the hall of textiles of the U.S. National
Museum (cat. no. T11100). The exhibits in this
hall are part of those being prepared for the enlarged
hall of textiles in the new Museum of History and
Technology now under construction. (Smithsonian
photo 45396.)

By Grace L. Rogers

THE SCHOLFIELD
WOOL-CARDING
MACHINES

Carding is the necessary preliminary step by
which individual short fibers of wool or cotton
are separated and cleaned of foreign materials so they
can be spun into yarn. The thoroughness of the carding
determines the quality of the yarn, while the position
in which the carded fibers are laid determines its
type. The fibers are laid parallel in order to spin a
smooth compact yarn, or they are crossed and intermingled
to produce a soft bulky yarn.

Primitive Carding

The earliest method of carding wool was probably
one in which, by use of the fingers alone, the tufts were
pulled apart, the foreign particles loosened and extracted,
and the fibers blended. Fuller’s teasels
(thistles with hooked points, Dispasacus fullonum), now
better known for raising the nap on woven woolens,
were also used at a very early date for carding. The
teasels were mounted on a pair of small rectangular
frames with handles; and from this device developed
the familiar small hand card (see fig. 2), measuring
about 8 inches by 5 inches, in which card clothing
(wire teeth embedded in leather) was mounted on a
board with the wire teeth bent and angled toward the
handle. The wool was placed on one card and a second
card was dragged across it, the two hands pulling
away from each other. This action separated the
fibers and laid them parallel to the handle, in a thin
film. After the fibers had been carded in this way several
times, the cards were turned so that the handles
were together and once again they were pulled across
each other. With the wire teeth now angled in the
same direction, the action rolled the carded fibers
into a sliver (a loose roll of untwisted fibers) that was
the length of the hand card and about the diameter
of the finger. This placed the wool fibers crosswise in
relation to the length of the sliver, their best position
for spinning.[1] Until the mid-18th century hand cards
were the only type of implement available for carding.

Figure 2.—Hand Cards “Used on Plantation of Mary C. Purvis,” Nelson County, Virginia,
during early 1800’s and now in U.S. National Museum (cat. no. T2848; Smithsonian
photo 37258).

Figure 3.—The First Machine in Lewis Paul’s British Patent 636, Issued August 30, 1748.
The treadle move the card-covered board B₁, in a horizontal direction as necessary to perform
the carding operation. With the aid of the needlestick the fibers were removed separately
from each of the 16 cards N. The carded fibers were placed on a narrow cloth band, which
unrolled from the small cylinder G, on the left, and was rolled up with the fibers on the cylinder
I, at the right.

First Mechanical Cards

The earliest mechanical device for carding fibers
was invented by Lewis Paul in England in 1738 but
not patented until August 30, 1748. The patent described
two machines. The first, and less important,
machine consisted of 16 narrow cards mounted on a
board; a single card held in the hand performed the
actual carding operation (see fig. 3). The second
machine utilized a horizontal cylinder covered with
parallel rows of card clothing. Under the cylinder
was a concave frame lined with similar card clothing.
As the cylinder was turned, the cards on it worked
against those on the concave frame, separating and
straightening the fibers (see fig. 4). After the fibers
were carded, the concave section was lowered and the
fibers were stripped off by hand with a needle stick,
an implement resembling a comb with very fine
needlelike metal teeth. Though his machine was far
from perfect. Lewis Paul had invented the carding
cylinder working with stationary cards and the
stripping comb.

Figure 4.—The Patent Description of Paul’s
Second Machine suggested that the fibers be carded
by a cylinder action, but be removed in the same
manner as directed in the first patent.

Figure 5.—Illustrations From British Patent 628, Issued January 20, 1748,
to Daniel Bourn for a roller card machine.

Figure 6.—The Most Important Single Feature
Illustrated in Richard Arkwright’s British patent 1111
of December 16, 1775, provided “a crank and a
frame of iron with teeth” to remove the carded fibers
from the cylinder.

Another important British patent was granted in
1748 to Daniel Bourn, who invented a machine with
four carding rollers set close together, the first of the
roller-card type (see fig. 5). To produce a practical
carding machine, however, several additional mechanical
improvements were necessary. The first of
these did not appear until more than two decades
later, in 1772, when John Lees of Manchester is
reported to have invented a machine featuring “a
perpetual revolving cloth, called a feeder,” that fed
the fibers into the machine.[2] Shortly afterward, the
stripper rollers[3] and the doffer comb[4] (a mechanical
utilization of Paul’s hand device) were added. Both
James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright claimed to
be the inventor of these improvements, but it was
Arkwright who, in 1775, first patented these ideas.
His comb and crank (see fig. 6) provided a mechanical
means by which the carded fibers could be removed
from the cylinder. With this, the cylinder card became
a practical machine. Arkwright continued the
modification of the doffing end by drawing the carded
fibers through a funnel and then passing them through
two rollers. This produced a continuous sliver, a
narrow ribbon of fibers ready to be spun into yarn.
However, it was soon realized that the bulk characteristic
desired in woolen yarns (but not desired in the
compact types such as worsted yarns or cotton yarns)
required that the wool be carded in a machine that
would help produce this.

Figure 7.—Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1796, an Engraving From John J. Currier’s
History of Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1764–1909, vol. 2, Newburyport, 1906–09.

In carding wool it was found more effective to omit
the flat stationary cards and to use only rollers to
work the fibers. The method of preparing the sliver
also had to be changed. Since it was necessary to
remove the wool fibers crosswise in the sliver, a fluted
wooden cylinder called a roller-bowl was used in
conjunction with an under board or shell. As a given
section of the carded wool was fed between the fluted
cylinder and the board, the action of the cylinder
rolled the fibers into a sliver about the diameter of the
finger and the length of the cylinder. Although these
were only 24-inch lengths as compared to the continuous
sliver produced by the Arkwright cotton-carding
machine,[5] wool could still be carded with
much more speed and thoroughness than with the
small hand cards. This then was the state of mechanical
wool carding in England in the 1790’s as two
experienced wool manufacturers, John and Arthur
Scholfield, planned their trip to America.

John and Arthur Scholfield

The Scholfields, however, were not to be the first
to introduce mechanical wool carding into America.
Several attempts had been made prior to their
arrival. In East Hartford, Connecticut, “about 1770
Elisha Pitkin had built a mill on the east side of Main
Street near the old meeting-house and Hockanum
Bridge, which was run by water-power, supplied by
damming the Hockanum River. Here, beside grinding
grain and plaster, was set up the first wool-carding
machine in the state, and, it is believed, in the country.”[6]
Samual Mayall in Boston, about 1788 or 1789,
set up a carding machine operated by horse power.
In 1791 he moved to Gray, Maine, where he operated
a shop for wool carding and cloth dressing.[7] Of the
machines used at the Hartford Woolen Manufactory,
organized in 1788, a viewer reported he saw “two
carding-engines, working by water, of a very inferior
construction.” They were further described as having
“two large center cylinders in each, with two doffers,
and only two working cylinders, of the breadth of
bare sixteen inches, said to be invented by some
person there.”[8] But these were isolated examples;
most of the woolen mills of this period were like the
one built in 1792 by John Manning in Ipswich,
Massachusetts, where all the work of carding, spinning,
and weaving was still performed by hand.

The Scholfields’ knowledge of mechanical wool-processing
was to find a welcome reception in this young
nation now struggling for economic independence. The
exact reason for their decision to embark for America
is unknown. However, it may well be that they, like
Samuel Slater[9] some three years earlier, had learned of
the bounties being offered by several state legislatures
for the successful introduction of new textile machines.

Both John and Arthur were experienced in the
manufacture of woolens. They were the sons of a
clothier (during the 18th century, a person who performed
the several operations in finishing cloth) and
had been apprenticed to the trade. Arthur was 36
and a bachelor; John, a little younger, was married
and had six children. Arthur and John, with his
family, sailed from Liverpool in March 1793 and
arrived in Boston some two months later. Upon
arrival, their immediate concern was to find a dwelling
place for John’s family. Finally they were accommodated
by Jedediah Morse, well-known author of
Morse’s geography and gazetteer, in a lodging in Charlestown,
near Bunker Hill. In less than a month John
began to build a spinning jenny and a hand loom,
and soon the Scholfields started to produce woolen
cloth. The two brothers were joined in the venture
by John Shaw, a spinner and weaver who had migrated
from England with them. Morse, being much
impressed with some of the broadcloth they produced,
was especially interested to find that John
and Arthur understood the actual construction of the
textile machines. Morse immediately recommended
the Scholfields to some wealthy persons of Newburyport
(see fig. 7), who were interested in sponsoring
a new textile mill.

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, they signed a 14-year
lease for the water site, a dwelling house, a shop, and
17 acres of land. As soon as arrangements could be
completed, Arthur, John, and the latter’s family left
for Montville.

Figure 9.—In the Collection of the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan, Is This
Original Scholfield Wool-Carding Machine of the early 19th century. (Photo courtesy of
the Henry Ford Museum.)

The Scholfields quite probably did not take any of
the textile machinery from the Byfield factory with
them to Connecticut—first because the machines were
built while the brothers were under hire and so were
the property of the sponsors, and second because their
knowledge of how to build the machines would have
made it unnecessary to incur the inconvenience and
expense of transporting machines the hundred odd
miles to Montville. However, John Scholfield’s sons
reported[10] 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. However,
it would have been most uncommon for a textile
machine, even an English one, to have been constructed
of mahogany; and having built successful
carding machines, the men at Byfield would have
found it unnecessary to attempt the virtually impossible
feat of importing an English one. If it ever
existed and was taken to Connecticut, therefore, this
machine was probably not a carding machine manufactured
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.

Figure 10.—An Original Scholfield Wool-Carding Machine at Old Sturbridge Village,
Sturbridge, Massachusetts. It is now run by electricity. (Photo courtesy of Old Sturbridge Village.)

During the next half century, this mill was held by
a number of individuals. William Bartlett and Moses
Brown, two of the leading stockholders of the company,
sold it in 1804 to John Lees, the English overseer
who succeeded the Scholfields, and he continued
to operate it for about 20 years. On August 24, 1824,
the mill was purchased at a Sheriff’s sale by Gorham
Parsons, who sold a part interest to Paul Moody, a
machinist from the textile town of Lowell. Moody
operated the mill for the next 5 years and at his death
in 1831 his heirs sold their interest back to Parsons.
In 1832 it was leased for 7 years by William N.
Cleveland and Solomon Wilde under the name of
William N. Cleveland & Co. Following the expiration
of the lease in 1839, a portion of the mill was
occupied for 3 or 4 years by Enoch Pearson, believed
to have been a descendant of the John Pearson who
had been a clothier in Rowley in 1643, and subsequently
various industries occupied other portions
and later the entire building, which burned with all
its contents on October 29, 1859.

If the first Scholfield carding machine remained a
part of the property, therefore it must have been lost
in that fire. However, the Scholfields’ importance to
American wool manufacture was not contingent on
the building of one successful carding machine, regardless
of whether it was the first. It was the change
in the scope of their business ventures after their move
to Connecticut that synonymized the name of Scholfield
with mechanical wool carding in America.

John and Arthur had built their woolen mill at
Uncasville, a village in the town of Montville, and
there Arthur remained with his brother until 1801,
when he married, sold his interest to John, and moved
to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. John and his sons continued
to operate the mill until 1806, when difficulties
over water privileges spurred him to purchase property
in Stonington, Connecticut, where he built a
new mill containing two double-cylinder carding
machines.[11] In 1813, leaving one son in charge at
Stonington, John returned to Montville and purchased
another factory and water privileges. He continued
in the woolen manufacture until his death in
1820.

Arthur, soon after arriving in Pittsfield, constructed
a carding machine and opened a Pittsfield mill. The
following advertisement appeared in the Pittsfield Sun,
November 2, 1801:

The people around Pittsfield soon realized that the
mechanically carded wool was not only much easier
to spin but enabled them to produce twice as much
yarn from the same amount of wool. Although many
brought their wool to be carded at his factory, Arthur
was not without problems. These were evident in
his advertisement of May 1802, in which he stated
that if the wool was not properly “sorted, clipped, and
cleansed” he would charge an extra penny per pound.
He also added that he would issue no credit. Shortly
after this, recognizing the need for additional carding
machines in other localities, Arthur Scholfield undertook
the work of manufacturing such machines for
sale. Through this venture he was to spread his
knowledge of mechanical wool carding throughout
the country.

The Scholfield Machines

The first record of Arthur’s sale of carding machines
appeared in the Pittsfield Sun in September 1803.
The next year, in May 1804, his advertisement informed
the readers that A. Scholfield continued to
card wool, and also that:

Scholfield must have felt that some of his competitors
were charging much more for their carding machines
than they were worth. Also, others were producing
inferior machines that did not card the wool properly.
Both factors encouraged Arthur to continue the commercial
production of wool-carding machines. In
April 1805 he again advertised:

And in 1806:

With both carpenters and machinists working under
his direction, he soon abandoned completely the
carding of wool and devoted his full time to producing
carding machines. An advertisement in the Pittsfield
Sun shows Alexander and Elisha Ely providing
carding service there with a Scholfield machine in
1806. Scholfield machines were also set up in Massachusetts
at Bethuel Baker, Jr., & Co. in Lanesborough
in 1805, at Walker & Worthington in Lenox, at
Curtis’s Mills in Stockbridge, at Reuben Judd & Co.
in Williamstown, in Lee at the falls near the forge, at
Bairds’ Mills in Bethlehem in 1806, and by John Hart
in Cheshire in 1807. Subsequently many more
Scholfield machines were set up in many other places
as far away as Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1809
and Mason Village, New Hampshire, in about 1810.

One of the difficulties that Arthur encountered in
building these early machines was in cutting the
comb plates that freed the carded fleece from the
cylinder. These plates had to be prepared by hand,
the teeth being cut and filed one by one. In 1814
James Standring, an old friend and co-worker,
smuggled into this country a “teeth-cutting machine,”
which he had procured on a trip to England.[12] Standring
kept the machine closely guarded, permitting
only Scholfield and one other friend to see it. Standring
used his machine to make new saws of all
descriptions and to re-cut old ones as well as to
prepare comb plates for the carding machines. But
in spite of this new simplified method of producing
comb plates Scholfield’s business did not flourish,
for the tremendous influx of foreign fabrics after the
War of 1812 greatly damaged the domestic textile
industries, including the manufacture of carding
machines.

By 1818 Scholfield’s friends had persuaded him to
apply to Congress for relief. To his brother John on
April 20, 1818, he wrote:

Apparently John felt the plan would not succeed,
for on the following December 17 Arthur wrote
him again:

Arthur never applied to Congress for the recognition
his contemporaries felt he deserved.[13]

Several changes in the construction of wool-carding
machines took place during this period. As early as
1816 John Scholfield, Jr., was reported to have in his
mill in Jewett City, Connecticut, a double-cylinder
carding machine 3 feet wide. And in 1822 a Worcester,
Massachusetts, machine maker advertised that he
was “constructing carding machines entirely of iron.”[14]
Although a few of these iron carding machines were
sold, they did not become common until 50 years
later.[15]

There is no record that Arthur Scholfield manufactured
carding machines of a width greater than
24 inches, or entirely of iron. However, little is known
of his last business years except that he remained in
Pittsfield until his death, March 27, 1827.

Only three wool-carding machines attributed to
the hands of the Scholfields are known to exist today.
All are 24-inch, single-cylinder carding machines of
the same general description (see fig. 8). They differ
only in minor respects that probably result from subsequent
changes and additions. One (fig. 9), now
located in the Plymouth Carding House, at Greenfield
Village, Dearborn, Michigan, was discovered in Ware,
Massachusetts. Another (fig. 10), now at Old Sturbridge
Village, Sturbridge, Massachusetts,[16] was
uncovered in a barn in northern New Hampshire.
The third (fig. 1), is in the U.S. National Museum
in the collection of the Division of Textiles.

Both it and the Dearborn machine have in former
times been described as “the original Scholfield
woolen card.” It is a romantic but unsubstantiated
idea that either of these is the first Scholfield carding
machine set up in the Byfield factory in 1794. The
author’s opinion is that all three were built by Arthur
Scholfield during his years in the Pittsfield factory. Examination
of the National Museum machine supports
this opinion. The woods used are all native to the
New England region. The frame, the large cylinder
and the roller called the fancy are constructed of
eastern white pine (the Sturbridge machine is also
constructed principally of pine). The joints of the
main frame are mortised and tenoned. At the
doffing end the main frame and cross supports are
numbered and matched, I to IIII, and at the feed end
they are numbered V to VIII but were mis-matched
in the original assembly. Further rigidity is achieved
by means of hand-forged lag screws. The arch of the
frame is birch and the arch arm maple. The 14-inch
doffer roller is made of chestnut.[17] The iron shafts are
square and turned down at the bearings. The worker
rollers are fitted with sprockets and turned by a hand-forged
chain. The comb plate, stamped “Standring,”
is hand filed, and is undoubtedly one of those
made before the “teeth-cutting machine” was
smuggled from England, for although one-third of the
plate is quite regular, the size and pitch of the teeth
in the remaining two-thirds are irregular. Part of
this irregularity might be explained as having been
caused by the hand-sharpening of a plate originally
cut by machine, but the teeth in one 2-inch span not
only vary in size but have a pitch that would have been
impossible to produce after the original plate had
been made.[18]

There is no doubt that this carding machine was
made by Arthur Scholfield, or under his immediate
supervision, sometime between 1803 and 1814. It
may well be one of the machines sent to southern New
Hampshire in 1809 or 1810, as it is known to have
been run in Nashua and Jeffrey, New Hampshire, in
the 1820’s and 1830’s, after which it was run by James
Townsend in Marlboro, New Hampshire, from 1837
until 1890, when it was exhibited at the Mechanics
Fair in Boston. Mr. Rufus S. Frost purchased the
machine and owned it until his death in 1897. When
the Frost estate was settled, the old Scholfield wool-carding
machine was purchased by the Davis &
Furber Machine Co., by which in 1954 it was presented
to the National Museum.

The disappearance of the original Scholfield carding
machine is regrettable, but fortunately the Scholfields’
importance to the American woolen industry does not
depend on their having produced this one machine.
These brothers, arriving here at a critical time in our
nation’s history, made important contributions to our
economic and to our technological progress—John by
his mill operations, Arthur by his ultimate work of
constructing wool-carding machines for sale. Of these
two aspects, it is the contribution of Arthur that has
had the more far-reaching effect, for he spread his
expert knowledge of mechanical wool carding, in the
form of machines, throughout the New England
woolen centers. His machines now stand as monuments
to the work of both.