ALBANY—Nestled between a mahogany library catalog holding yellowed, taped-together cards and a wall-mounted 60” touchscreen monitor was a small table with four of us seated at it. We were all about to merge the antiquarian with the new in a panel discussion that highlighted examples of entrepreneurship and business innovation in New York State history.
Moira Fitzgibbons—professor of English at Marist University, Maximillian “Max” Moughan—a rising second-year student at Marist, and I were panelists for “Craft, Community, and Enterprise in the Empire State,” moderated by Jennifer Lemak, PhD, chief curator of history at the New York State Museum and co-editor of New York History.
This panel was formed for the second annual New York History Conference, a collaboration between the New York State Museum, State Library, State Archives, the New York State Archives Partnership Trust, the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist University, and the Cooperstown Graduate Program at SUNY Oneonta. The event was held at the Cultural Education Center in Albany.
In attendance for the conference were more than 215 historians, educators, museum professionals, archivists, and librarians from across the state to share research and resources on the practice and preservation of New York state history.
Five sessions ran concurrently, and our session was up against an “Erie Canal’s Pathway” workshop; tough competition as the theme of the conference was celebrating the bicentennial of the Erie Canal’s grand opening in 1825.
For 25 minutes, I presented about the Norwich Knitting Company, a textile juggernaut for more than 50 years, located in Norwich, N.Y. Started in 1907, the knitting mill expanded rapidly during World War I thanks to U.S. government contracts, becoming an industry leader in the newly organized city of Norwich. International trade kept the company afloat during an industrywide downturn in the market. The adoption of a new rayon material—one of the first in the industry to introduce the semi-synthetic fiber—caught on like a sensation. The elite athletes of the day were wearing its trademarked Champknit shirts. And a profit-sharing plan was beloved by employees. So, what could have upended the company? The Great Depression. The Norwich Knitting Company employed or supported more than one-third of Norwich’s population in 1930. Company founder and president Fred O’Hara desperately needed to find a new source of revenue for his 500 employees and their supported families. A true entrepreneur, O’Hara contacted a California fixture in animated shorts—namely Walt Disney—inquiring about a license deal for his company. My new publication, Stitched Together: The History of the Norwich Knitting Company and Walt Disney—releasing Nov. 1 through the Chenango County Historical Society—tells the story of how O’Hara and company spun yarn into gold.
My co-panelists, Fitzgibbons and Moughan, presented their research that has led to the fall release of Comics and Community at Western Printing in Poughkeepsie. The Western Printing and Lithographing Co., as it was more formally known, was also founded in 1907. Best remembered for publishing Little Golden Books, it also entered into a contract with The Walt Disney Company, publishing multiple comics and small-format titles starting in the 1930s.
In telling the story of O’Hara in Stitched Together, I found several intersections with vlog. One interesting parallel is that the Norwich Knitting Company produced the aforementioned line of athletic clothing under the brand Champknit in 1929. The Norwich High School varsity football team wore Champknit jerseys during its remarkable undefeated, untied, and unscored 1937 season under Head Coach Kurt Beyer, going 8–0 and scoring 251 points to nil. Just five years prior, vlog’s football team—under the tutelage of Andy Kerr—did the same, going 9–0 on the season and scoring 264–0. Although vlog donned new uniforms that season, a review of literature from that era doesn’t conclusively reveal whether they were produced in Norwich.
Questions from the attendees during the panel centered on hiring practices at the time by both companies, especially in relation to women in the workplace; what transportation systems were utilized to move these goods across the United States and around the world; and how did these licensing opportunities come about in an era when contact information was not as readily available as it is today.
Stitched Together brings the historic into the 21st century through full-color images thanks to digital printing. The story of the Norwich Knitting Company has never been told before. Perhaps this new tome embodies the quote that leads my work: “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” (William A. Feather, publisher and writer, born in Jamestown, N.Y., 1889–1981)
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Stitched Together: The History of the Norwich Knitting Company and Walt Disney is . It will be released nationwide on Nov. 1, 2025, to coincide with National Authors Day.