Slater Mill Historic Site

Slater Mill Historic Site

A National Historic Landmark, the Slater Mill is located next to the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Modeled after cotton spinning mills first established in England, the Slater Mill is the first water-powered cotton spinning mill in North America to utilize the Arkwright system of cotton spinning as developed by Richard Arkwright. Samuel Slater, the mill's founder, apprenticed as a young man in Belper, England with industrialist Jedediah Strutt. Shortly after immigrating to the United States, Slater was hired by Moses Brown of Providence, Rhode Island to produce a working set of machines necessary to spin cotton yarn using water-power. Construction of the machines, as well as a dam, waterway, waterwheel and mill was completed in 1793. Manufacturing was based on Richard Arkwright's cotton spinning system which included carding, drawing, and spinning machines. Slater initially hired children and families to work in his mill, establishing a pattern that was replicated throughout the Blackstone Valley and known as the "Rhode Island System". It was later eclipsed by Francis Cabot Lowell's Waltham System.

Slater Mill has the distinction of carrying the first, lowest reference number in the National Register of Historic Places reference number series, although many hundreds of other sites were listed on the NRHP before it. The site was further designated a National Historic Landmark on the same date in 1966.