Thread Empire
Ross McDowell / Tartan Compass
Paisley's thread crossed the Atlantic early, and the business behind it grew into manufacturing on both sides of the ocean.
The Clark family's thread business grew from Paisley's textile economy in the early nineteenth century. By 1818 the firm was already exporting cotton thread to the United States. The family later established manufacturing in Newark, New Jersey, creating an industrial connection that ran in both directions across the Atlantic. Back in Scotland, the scale of the surviving mill complex shows how large that business became.
The surviving mill buildings beside the White Cart still show the industrial scale behind what can sound like a very ordinary product. The place looks intensely local, but the business network behind it was already transatlantic.
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