William died soon after, as the result of a farm accident, but Jedediah continued with his son's apprenticeship enabling Samuel to retain his inheritance intact. He was a very able student but could see that, because of all Jedediah's sons, he would never manage at one of his benefactor's cotton mills. Although there is some controversy since there was a law about taking information out of the country (what we would call a "Brain Drain"), Samuel left secretly for America in 1789 and after a short employment in a New York mill he went to work for a Quaker, Moses Brown and his partner William Almy, in Providence. Samuel had heard about their advanced machines and experimental work and offered to work with no contract, to prove his worth. During this time he reworked one of their spinning frames similar to Arkwright's Water Frame and was subsequently offered a partnership. Samuel improved various machines, using his overall knowledge of the whole spinning process to concentrate on the bottlenecks.

Later Samuel used his management training to teach his businessmen colleagues the techniques that had made Jedediah's mills so successful. His aim was to run the mill at full capacity and develop a market for all the yarn that was produced. His partners had been making to order causing peaks and troughs in the demand. His sucess at running the business in Pawtucket, Rhode Island led to the "Slater Mill" being built in 1792. This is acknowledged as the first successful American cotton spinning mill.

Samuel's view on how to be successful differed from his partners. He had shown that a mill specialising in a single process was viable but Moses and William wanted to be involved with the whole process up to the finished knitted goods. In 1797 Samuel left the partnership to build his own White Mill on the other side of the river.

In 1791 he married Hannah the daughter of a Quaker, Oziel Wilkinson, with whom he had been lodging and with this family developed equipment and built mills during the spread of the American industrial revolution. His knowledge of Strutt's equipment and fireproof building design was invaluable to this development. The arrival from England of Samuel's brother with more tool and pattern designs led to further expansion and the village of Slatersville developing.

Hannah died in 1812 leaving Samuel with seven children and in 1817 he married Mrs Ester Parkinson, a widow. Samuel died in 1835 being known as the father of the American Cotton industry.

Belper is now twinned with Pawtucket.

More information on the area is available at Pawtucket's local website