2. CHAPTER II
EDISON'S PEDIGREE
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 régime 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
débris 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 posesssions
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).