Photo: Jack Delano, c. 1941, Library of Congress, public domain.

When the United States went to war, it needed wool: for uniforms, for coats, for the blankets soldiers slept under.

Few companies were better placed to supply it than the American Woolen Company, the firm that built the Wood Mill. Both world wars were a boom for American Woolen. Military orders kept the company prosperous into 1945, and by the value of World War II production contracts, American Woolen ranked 51st among all U.S. corporations.

You can still hold the proof. The Maynard Historical Society keeps a WWII American Woolen army blanket, stored in its American Woolen box. It belonged to Irvin Stock, who served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1943 to 1946.

The photograph at the top of this post was taken around 1941 by Jack Delano, a photographer for the federal government. It shows the Lawrence mills as they looked in those years.

The war orders kept the looms busy, but they also hid a problem. Once government contracts ended after the Korean War, American Woolen would face competition it couldn't beat. That's the next part of the story.

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