William Madison Wood

William M. Wood (1858 – February 2, 1926) was a textile mill owner of Lawrence, Massachusetts who was considered to be an expert in efficiency. He made a good deal of his fortune through being hired by mill owners to turn around failing mills and was despised by organized labor.

William Wood was born in 1858 in a cottage on Pease Point Way, in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on the island of Martha's Vineyard. His parents, Grace (Emma) Wood and William Wood Sr., were Portuguese immigrants from the Azores. His father, William Sr., Guilherme Medeiros Silva was a crewman on a New Bedford whaling ship from 1853 until his death in 1871. William Jr. was only 12 years old when his father died, and had to drop out of school and find a job to provide for his mother and younger siblings. Fortunately for William Wood, a wealthy New Bedford textile manufacturer named Andrew Pierce offered him a job working in his Wamasutta Cotton Mill. Pierce would soon see that hiring young William would prove to be extremely beneficial. Pierce was impressed with Wood's work and promoted him to the manufacturing department, where he learned cost structures and figures. At the age of eighteen, Wood left New Bedford for Philadelphia. With the help of Andrew Pierce, William was able to find a good job with a Philadelphia brokerage firm. This is where he learned about stocks and bonds. After tiring of Philadelphia, he returned to New Bedford and worked at a bank. According to the Dukes County Intelligencer, when a Fall River textile company went bankrupt, its new manager hired William as paymaster. Then in 1885, the Washington Mill in Lawrence went bankrupt and was purchased by Frederick Ayer of Lowell. Frederick Ayer and his brother James Cook Ayer were successful patent medicine producers.

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