Belper is twinned with Pawtucket, Rhode Island , the connection being Samuel Slater of Milford who was an apprentice of Jedediah Strutt who allegedly absconded to America to found that country's cotton spinning industry.

Pawtucket was a major contributor of cotton textiles during the American Industrial Revolution. Slater Mill, built in 1793 by Samuel Slater on the Black River falls in downtown Pawtucket, was the first fully mechanized cotton-spinning mill in America. Slater Mill is known for developing a commercially successful production process not reliant on earlier horse-drawn processes developed in America. He constructed and operated machines for producing yarn. Other manufacturers continued, transforming Pawtucket into a center for textiles, iron working and other products.

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 began in 1790 and 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.

Information on this page was compiled from ‘wikipedia & belper-research.com"