My grandfather, Judge E. C. O’Rear gave me this account of one of the business enterprises of his father Daniel O’Rear. Judge O’Rear wrote:
"My father was a well educated man. He was by far above the average culture of those families in the country who esteemed learning. He had given his older children the best the times and his means afforded. Four of them were doctors.:
Continuing from my notes made at that time (1947).
"My father ran a carding factory at Camargo, Montgomery County, Kentucky. As much of the woolen cloth used in those days was made at home, the people would bring their wool to my father’s factory to be carded so that the women could then spin it into yarn on their spinning wheels. The motive power was horses on a treadmill. This was a wheel large enough and strong enough to support a horse mounted with the shaft vertical supported at the ceiling and at the floor. This shaft was geared to the carding machinery. The shaft supports were offset slightly so that the wheel was inclined at an angle. The horse was placed on the wheel facing upward and as he tried to walk forward up the incline, the wheel turned and drove the shafts for the carding machinery. The treadmill was later replaced by a steam engine.
I recall an Englishman who worked in the factory for my father. He talked with a cockney accent.