[1] The same type of hand cards were also used for cotton in Colonial America, but because the cotton fibers were not laid parallel in the sliver only coarse yarns could be spun. In ancient Peru the fibers for spinning fine cotton yarns were prepared with the fingers alone. In India the cotton fibers were combed with the fine-toothed jawbone of the boalee fish before the fibers were removed from the seed. (J.F. Watson, The textile manufactures and the costumes of the people of India, London, 1866, p. 64.)

[2] Edward Baines, History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain, London, 1835, p. 176.

[3] The wire points of the worker roller pick up the fibers from the faster moving main cylinder, carding the fibers on contact. A stripping action takes place when the wires of the worker roller meet the points of the stripper roller in a "point to back" action. This arrangement is used to remove the wool from the worker and put it back on the wire teeth of the main cylinder. Illustrated in W. Van Bergen and H.R. Mauersberger, American wool handbook, New York, 1948, p. 451.

[4] The doffer comb, a serrated metal plate the length of the rollers, removes the carded fibers from the last roller or doffer.

[5] This was no great disadvantage at this time, as wool was still being spun on the spinning wheel. The mechanical spinning of woolen yarns was an obstinate problem that was not solved until 1815–1820. It then was necessary to piece these 24-inch slivers together before they could be spun until 1826, when a device for the doffing of carded wool in a continuous sliver was perfected by an American, John Goulding, and patented by him.

[6] A.P. Pitkin, The Pitkin family of America, Hartford, 1887, p. 75.

[7] From a letter written in 1889 by Mayall's son; A.H. Cole, The American wool manufacture, vol. 1, Cambridge, 1926, p. 90.

[8] From a report of the visit of Henry Wansey in 1794, cited by W.R. Bagnall, The textile industries of the United States, Cambridge, 1893, p. 107.

[9] Slater introduced the Arkwright system of carding and spinning cotton into America in 1790. Bringing neither plans nor models with him from which to build the machines, he relied instead on his detailed knowledge of their construction. England prohibited the export of textile machines, models, and plans, and even attempted to prevent skilled artisans from leaving the country. George S. White, Memoir of Samuel Slater, Philadelphia, 1836, pp. 37 and 71.

[10] R.C. Taft, Some notes upon the introduction of the woolen manufacture into the United States, Providence, 1882, pp. 17–18. The Scholfield sons, of whom three were still living in the 1880's, were quite elderly at the time Taft talked to them; only James, aged 98, would have been able to remember the Connecticut move.

[11] There is no record of the carding machine made of mahogany which John's sons reported had been transferred to the Stonington mill.

[12] This is probably the machine that gave rise to stories of a carding machine having been smuggled from England during the early Byfield days. J.E.A. Smith, The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1800 to the year 1876, Springfield, 1876, p. 167.

[13] U.S. 15th Congress, 1st and 2nd sessions, The debates and proceedings in