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THOMAS ALVA EDISON was born at
Milan Ohio, February 11, 1847. The
State that rivals Virginia as a "Mother of
Presidents" has evidently other titles to
distinction of the same nature. For picturesque
detail it would not be easy to find any story
excelling that of the Edison family before it
reached the Western Reserve. The story
epitomizes American idealism, restlessness,
freedom of individual opinion, and ready
adjustment to the surrounding conditions of
pioneer life. The ancestral Edisons who came
over from Holland, as nearly as can be
determined, in 1730, were descendants of
extensive millers on the Zuyder Zee, and took
up patents of land along the Passaic River,
New Jersey, close to the home that Mr.
Edison established in the Orange Mountains a
hundred and sixty years later. They landed at
Elizabethport, New Jersey, and first settled
near Caldwell in that State, where some graves
of the family may still be found. President
Cleveland was born in that quiet hamlet. It is
a curious fact that in the Edison family the
pronunciation of the name has always been with
the long "e" sound, as it would naturally be
in the Dutch language. The family prospered
and must have enjoyed public confidence, for we
find the name of Thomas Edison, as a bank
official on Manhattan Island, signed to
Continental currency in 1778. According to
the family records this Edison, great-
grandfather of Thomas Alva, reached the
extreme old age of 104 years. But all was
not well, and, as has happened so often
before, the politics of father and son were
violently different. The Loyalist movement
that took to Nova Scotia so many Americans
after the War of Independence carried with it
John, the son of this stalwart Continental.
Thus it came about that Samuel Edison, son of
John, was born at Digby, Nova Scotia, in
1804. Seven years later John Edison who,
as a Loyalist or United Empire emigrant, had
become entitled under the laws of Canada to a
grant of six hundred acres of land, moved
westward to take possession of this property.
He made his way through the State of New York
in wagons drawn by oxen to the remote and
primitive township of Bayfield, in Upper
Canada, on Lake Huron. Although the journey
occurred in balmy June, it was necessarily
attended with difficulty and privation; but the
new home was situated in good farming country,
and once again this interesting nomadic family
settled down.
John Edison moved from Bayfield to Vienna,
Ontario, on the northern bank of Lake Erie.
Mr. Edison supplies an interesting
reminiscence of the old man and his environment
in those early Canadian days. "When I was
five years old I was taken by my father and
mother on a visit to Vienna. We were driven by
carriage from Milan, Ohio, to a railroad,
then to a port on Lake Erie, thence by a
canal-boat in a tow of several to Port
Burwell, in Canada, across the lake, and
from there we drove to Vienna, a short distance
away. I remember my grandfather perfectly as he
appeared, at 102 years of age, when he
died. In the middle of the day he sat under a
large tree in front of the house facing a
well-travelled road. His head was covered
completely with a large quantity of very white
hair, and he chewed tobacco incessantly,
nodding to friends as they passed by. He used a
very large cane, and walked from the chair to
the house, resenting any assistance. I viewed
him from a distance, and could never get very
close to him. I remember some large pipes, and
especially a molasses jug, a trunk, and several
other things that came from Holland."
John Edison was long-lived, like his father,
and reached the ripe old age of 102, leaving
his son Samuel charged with the care of the
family destinies, but with no great burden of
wealth. Little is known of the early manhood of
this father of T. A. Edison until we find
him keeping a hotel at Vienna, marrying a
school-teacher there (Miss Nancy Elliott,
in 1828), and taking a lively share in the
troublous politics of the time. He was six feet
in height, of great bodily vigor, and of such
personal dominance of character that he became a
captain of the insurgent forces rallying under
the banners of Papineau and Mackenzie. The
opening years of Queen Victoria's reign
witnessed a belated effort in Canada to
emphasize the principle that there should not be
taxation without representation; and this
descendant of those who had left the United
States from disapproval of such a doctrine,
flung himself headlong into its support.
It has been said of Earl Durham, who pacified
Canada at this time and established the present
system of government, that he made a country and
marred a career. But the immediate measures of
repression enforced before a liberal policy was
adopted were sharp and severe, and Samuel
Edison also found his own career marred on
Canadian soil as one result of the Durham
administration. Exile to Bermuda with other
insurgents was not so attractive as the perils of
a flight to the United States. A very hurried
departure was effected in secret from the scene
of trouble, and there are romantic traditions of
his thrilling journey of one hundred and
eighty-two miles toward safety, made almost
entirely without food or sleep, through a wild
country infested with Indians of unfriendly
disposition. Thus was the Edison family
repatriated by a picturesque political episode,
and the great inventor given a birthplace on
American soil, just as was Benjamin Franklin
when his father came from England to Boston.
Samuel Edison left behind him, however, in
Canada, several brothers, all of whom lived to
the age of ninety or more, and from whom there
are descendants in the region.
After some desultory wanderings for a year or
two along the shores of Lake Erie, among the
prosperous towns then springing up, the family,
with its Canadian home forfeited, and in quest
of another resting-place, came to Milan,
Ohio, in 1842. That pretty little village
offered at the moment many attractions as a
possible Chicago. The railroad system of Ohio
was still in the future, but the Western
Reserve had already become a vast wheat-field,
and huge quantities of grain from the central and
northern counties sought shipment to Eastern
ports. The Huron River, emptying into Lake
Erie, was navigable within a few miles of the
village, and provided an admirable outlet.
Large granaries were established, and proved so
successful that local capital was tempted into
the project of making a tow-path canal from
Lockwood Landing all the way to Milan itself.
The quaint old Moravian mission and quondam
Indian settlement of one hundred inhabitants
found itself of a sudden one of the great grain
ports of the world, and bidding fair to rival
Russian Odessa. A number of grain
warehouses, or primitive elevators, were built
along the bank of the canal, and the produce of
the region poured in immediately, arriving in
wagons drawn by four or six horses with loads of
a hundred bushels. No fewer than six hundred
wagons came clattering in, and as many as twenty
sail vessels were loaded with thirty-five
thousand bushels of grain, during a single day.
The canal was capable of being navigated by
craft of from two hundred to two hundred and
fifty tons burden, and the demand for such
vessels soon led to the development of a brisk
ship-building industry, for which the abundant
forests of the region supplied the necessary
lumber. An evidence of the activity in this
direction is furnished by the fact that six
revenue cutters were launched at this port in
these brisk days of its prime.
Samuel Edison, versatile, buoyant of temper,
and ever optimistic, would thus appear to have
pitched his tent with shrewd judgment. There
was plenty of occupation ready to his hand, and
more than one enterprise received his attention;
but he devoted his energies chiefly to the making
of shingles, for which there was a large demand
locally and along the lake. Canadian lumber was
used principally in this industry. The wood was
imported in "bolts" or pieces three feet long.
A bolt made two shingles; it was sawn asunder
by hand, then split and shaved. None but
first-class timber was used, and such shingles
outlasted far those made by machinery with their
cross-grain cut. A house in Milan, on which
some of those shingles were put in 1844, was
still in excellent condition forty-two years
later. Samuel Edison did well at this
occupation, and employed several men, but there
were other outlets from time to time for his
business activity and speculative disposition.
Edison's mother was an attractive and highly
educated woman, whose influence upon his
disposition and intellect has been profound and
lasting. She was born in Chenango County,
New York, in 1810, and was the daughter
of the Rev. John Elliott, a Baptist
minister and descendant of an old Revolutionary
soldier, Capt. Ebenezer Elliott, of Scotch
descent. The old captain was a fine and
picturesque type. He fought all through the
long War of Independence --seven years--and
then appears to have settled down at
Stonington, Connecticut. There, at any
rate, he found his wife, "grandmother
Elliott," who was Mercy Peckham, daughter
of a Scotch Quaker. Then came the residence
in New York State, with final removal to
Vienna, for the old soldier, while drawing his
pension at Buffalo, lived in the little
Canadian town, and there died, over 100
years old. The family was evidently one of
considerable culture and deep religious feeling,
for two of Mrs. Edison's uncles and two
brothers were also in the same Baptist
ministry. As a young woman she became a teacher
in the public high school at Vienna, and thus
met her husband, who was residing there. The
family never consisted of more than three
children, two boys and a girl. A trace of the
Canadian environment is seen in the fact that
Edison's elder brother was named William
Pitt, after the great English statesman.
Both his brother and the sister exhibited
considerable ability. William Pitt Edison as
a youth was so clever with his pencil that it was
proposed to send him to Paris as an art
student. In later life he was manager of the
local street railway lines at Port Huron,
Michigan, in which he was heavily interested.
He also owned a good farm near that town, and
during the ill-health at the close of his life,
when compelled to spend much of the time
indoors, he devoted himself almost entirely to
sketching. It has been noted by intimate
observers of Thomas A. Edison that in
discussing any project or new idea his first
impulse is to take up any piece of paper
available and make drawings of it. His
voluminous note-books are a mass of sketches.
Mrs-Tannie Edison Bailey, the sister,
had, on the other hand, a great deal of
literary ability, and spent much of her time in
writing.
The great inventor, whose iron endurance and
stern will have enabled him to wear down all his
associates by work sustained through arduous days
and sleepless nights, was not at all strong as a
child, and was of fragile appearance. He had
an abnormally large but well-shaped head, and
it is said that the local doctors feared he might
have brain trouble. In fact, on account of his
assumed delicacy, he was not allowed to go to
school for some years, and even when he did
attend for a short time the results were not
encouraging--his mother being hotly indignant
upon hearing that the teacher had spoken of him
to an inspector as "addled." The youth was,
indeed, fortunate far beyond the ordinary in
having a mother at once loving, well-informed,
and ambitious, capable herself, from her
experience as a teacher, of undertaking and
giving him an education better than could be
secured in the local schools of the day.
Certain it is that under this simple regime
studious habits were formed and a taste for
literature developed that have lasted to this
day. If ever there was a man who tore the heart
out of books it is Edison, and what has once
been read by him is never forgotten if useful or
worthy of submission to the test of experiment.
But even thus early the stronger love of
mechanical processes and of probing natural
forces manifested itself. Edison has said that
he never saw a statement in any book as to such
things that he did not involuntarily challenge,
and wish to demonstrate as either right or
wrong. As a mere child the busy scenes of the
canal and the grain warehouses were of consuming
interest, but the work in the ship-building
yards had an irresistible fascination. His
questions were so ceaseless and innumerable that
the penetrating curiosity of an unusually strong
mind was regarded as deficiency in powers of
comprehension, and the father himself, a man of
no mean ingenuity and ability, reports that the
child, although capable of reducing him to
exhaustion by endless inquiries, was often
spoken of as rather wanting in ordinary acumen.
This apparent dulness is, however, a quite
common incident to youthful genius.
The constructive tendencies of this child of
whom his father said once that he had never had
any boyhood days in the ordinary sense, were
early noted in his fondness for building little
plank roads out of the debris of the yards and
mills. His extraordinarily retentive memory was
shown in his easy acquisition of all the songs of
the lumber gangs and canal men before he was five
years old. One incident tells how he was found
one day in the village square copying laboriously
the signs of the stores. A highly
characteristic event at the age of six is
described by his sister. He had noted a goose
sitting on her eggs and the result. One day
soon after, he was missing. By-and-by,
after an anxious search, his father found him
sitting in a nest he had made in the barn,
filled with goose-eggs and hens' eggs he had
collected, trying to hatch them out.
One of Mr. Edison's most vivid recollections
goes back to 1850, when as a child three of
four years old he saw camped in front of his home
six covered wagons, "prairie schooners," and
witnessed their departure for California. The
great excitement over the gold discoveries was
thus felt in Milan, and these wagons, laden
with all the worldly possessions of their
owners, were watched out of sight on their long
journey by this fascinated urchin, whose own
discoveries in later years were to tempt many
other argonauts into the auriferous realms of
electricity.
Another vivid memory of this period concerns his
first realization of the grim mystery of death.
He went off one day with the son of the
wealthiest man in the town to bathe in the
creek. Soon after they entered the water the
other boy disappeared. Young Edison waited
around the spot for half an hour or more, and
then, as it was growing dark, went home puzzled
and lonely, but silent as to the occurrence.
About two hours afterward, when the missing boy
was being searched for, a man came to the
Edison home to make anxious inquiry of the
companion with whom he had last been seen.
Edison told all the circumstances with a painful
sense of being in some way implicated. The
creek was at once dragged, and then the body was
recovered.
Edison had himself more than one narrow escape.
Of course he fell in the canal and was nearly
drowned; few boys in Milan worth their salt
omitted that performance. On another occasion
he encountered a more novel peril by falling into
the pile of wheat in a grain elevator and being
almost smothered. Holding the end of a
skate-strap for another lad to shorten with an
axe, he lost the top of a finger. Fire also
had its perils. He built a fire in a barn, but
the flames spread so rapidly that, although he
escaped himself, the barn was wholly destroyed,
and he was publicly whipped in the village square
as a warning to other youths. Equally well
remembered is a dangerous encounter with a ram
that attacked him while he was busily engaged
digging out a bumblebee's nest near an orchard
fence. The animal knocked him against the
fence, and was about to butt him again when he
managed to drop over on the safe side and
escape. He was badly hurt and bruised, and no
small quantity of arnica was needed for his
wounds.
Meantime little Milan had reached the zenith of
its prosperity, and all of a sudden had been
deprived of its flourishing grain trade by the
new Columbus, Sandusky & Hocking Railroad;
in fact, the short canal was one of the last
efforts of its kind in this country to compete
with the new means of transportation. The bell
of the locomotive was everywhere ringing the
death-knell of effective water haulage, with
such dire results that, in 1880, of the
4468 miles of American freight canal, that
had cost $214,000,000, no fewer than
1893 miles had been abandoned, and of the
remaining 2575 miles quite a large proportion
was not paying expenses. The short Milan canal
suffered with the rest, and to-day lies
well-nigh obliterated, hidden in part by
vegetable gardens, a mere grass-grown
depression at the foot of the winding, shallow
valley. Other railroads also prevented any
further competition by the canal, for a branch
of the Wheeling & Lake Erie now passes
through the village, while the Lake Shore &
Michigan Southern runs a few miles to the
south.
The owners of the canal soon had occasion to
regret that they had disdained the overtures of
enterprising railroad promoters desirous of
reaching the village, and the consequences of
commercial isolation rapidly made themselves
felt. It soon became evident to Samuel Edison
and his wife that the cozy brick home on the
bluff must be given up and the struggle with
fortune resumed elsewhere. They were
well-to-do, however, and removing, in
1854, to Port Huron, Michigan, occupied
a large colonial house standing in the middle of
an old Government fort reservation of ten acres
overlooking the wide expanse of the St. Clair
River just after it leaves Lake Huron. It
was in many ways an ideal homestead, toward
which the family has always felt the strongest
attachment, but the association with Milan has
never wholly ceased. The old house in which
Edison was born is still occupied (in
1910) by Mr. S. O. Edison, a
half-brother of Edison's father, and a man of
marked inventive ability. He was once prominent
in the iron-furnace industry of Ohio, and was
for a time associated in the iron trade with the
father of the late President McKinley. Among
his inventions may be mentioned a machine for
making fuel from wheat straw, and a
smoke-consuming device.
This birthplace of Edison remains the plain,
substantial little brick house it was
originally: one- storied, with rooms finished
on the attic floor. Being built on the
hillside, its basement opens into the rear
yard. It was at first heated by means of open
coal grates, which may not have been altogether
adequate in severe winters, owing to the
altitude and the north- eastern exposure, but a
large furnace is one of the more modern changes.
Milan itself is not materially unlike the
smaller Ohio towns of its own time or those of
later creation, but the venerable appearance of
the big elm-trees that fringe the trim lawns
tells of its age. It is, indeed, an extremely
neat, snug little place, with well-kept
homes, mostly of frame construction, and
flagged streets crossing each other at right
angles. There are no poor--at least,
everybody is apparently well-to-do. While a
leisurely atmosphere pervades the town, few
idlers are seen. Some of the residents are
engaged in local business; some are occupied in
farming and grape culture; others are employed
in the iron-works near-by, at Norwalk. The
stores and places of public resort are gathered
about the square, where there is plenty of room
for hitching when the Saturday trading is done
at that point, at which periods the fitful
bustle recalls the old wheat days when young
Edison ran with curiosity among the six and
eight horse teams that had brought in grain.
This square is still covered with fine primeval
forest trees, and has at its centre a handsome
soldiers' monument of the Civil War, to which
four paved walks converge. It is an altogether
pleasant and unpretentious town, which cherishes
with no small amount of pride its association
with the name of Thomas Alva Edison.
In view of Edison's Dutch descent, it is
rather singular to find him with the name of
Alva, for the Spanish Duke of Alva was
notoriously the worst tyrant ever known to the
Low Countries, and his evil deeds occupy many
stirring pages in Motley's famous history. As
a matter of fact, Edison was named after
Capt. Alva Bradley, an old friend of his
father, and a celebrated ship-owner on the
Lakes. Captain Bradley died a few years ago
in wealth, while his old associate, with equal
ability for making money, was never able long to
keep it (differing again from the Revolutionary
New York banker from whom his son's other
name, "Thomas," was taken).
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