Thomas Ainsworth

Thomas Ainsworth (1795–1841) was an Englishman and the founding father of Nijverdal, a small town in the Netherlands, during the 19th century.

He laid the basis for the Royal Steam Weaving Mill (KSW) in Nijverdal in 1836 that is still operating today under the name Koninklijke Ten Cate NV [nl].

Thomas Ainsworth (1795–1841) was born in Bolton le Moors, Lancashire a textile-producing region in England.

When the Belgian Revolution started Thomas moved to an area that stayed in the Netherlands and lived for more than a year in the Zaanstreek before he got the idea to go to Elberfeld, Germany to work with chemical aspects of the textile industry which he was very much interested in as later found in a book that he worked for Van Gelder, Schouten & Co where they made bleached and colored paper.

Charles de Maere [nl], a Belgian textile entrepreneur who came to live in Twente after 1830 wanted the expertise of Thomas Ainsworth and later on in 1832 the secretary of the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij, Willem de Clercq talked about their own textile industry in Twente upon which Nijverdal was founded with the coming of the Royal Steam Weaving Mill (KSW).