The Hollingworths left the West Riding of Yorkshire during the depression which began in 1825 and from which England did not recover until after 1833.

Edwin sailed from Liverpool aboard the passenger ship Isaac Hicks and landed in New York on December 6, 1827, along with his Mother Elizabeth (Betty Rawcliffe), brothers Joseph, Benjamin and sister Hannah. In December 1827, Joseph, James, Edwin, and their father, George, joined John and Jabez, who arrived a year earlier, in Leicester, Massachusetts. When they arrived, they went to work for the Leicester Manufacturing Company, which made woolen cloth. They found Jabez in the machine shop and John Slubbing. Joseph went to work in the finishing room, James spun, and Edwin, the youngest, served as a warp winder. Mr. Hollingworth apparently worked as a weaver.

Spring of 1830 found Joseph, James, Edwin and George Hollingworth in Southbridge, Massachusetts, a town with about 1,100 people, where they were employed by the Hamilton Woolen Company, then one of the largest firms in America. Father and Joseph were warping, James was a jack spinner and Edwin was spooling.

About 1831, Edwin went to Woodstock, Connecticut to to work in the Muddy Brook-Pond Factory, which the family had leased. Their attempt to run the Woodstock factory as a family venture is the last reasonably full account we have of their life in America. The family apparently kept the factory for the original three year lease, but they did not purchase the mill. Edwin temporarily submerged, Got married to Clarissa in 1839 and appeared again in Waterford, Connecticut, as a young father before moving to McDonough, New York, where as late as 1874, E. Hollingworth and Son were manufacturing cassimere’s and flannels.