Pawtucket Basket

The name Pawtucket comes from a Narragansett word that refers to waterfalls, especially those where freshwater rivers empty into bodies of salt water. I think the name of this block refers to the fourth largest city in Rhode Island, which was heavily involved in cotton spinning during the American Industrial Revolution.  Samuel Slater – I’ll tell you more about him later – built America’s first fully mechanized water-powered cotton spinning mill here in 1793. Before the Slater Mill, cotton in the U.S. was spun using horse or mule power. And before that, spinning was done by hand on spinning wheels. In the 1920’s, when production began to fall off in the northeast, a non-profit organization was founded to preserve what was left of the historic mill. Today the Slater Mill site is an educational center and a living history museum.