“The Boys’ Life of Edison” by Wm. H. Meadowcroft is a biographical account aimed at young readers, written in the late 19th century. The book chronicles the life and early experiences of Thomas Edison, one of the most significant inventors of the electrical age. It focuses on his formative years, highlighting his curiosity, early experiments, and the hard work that led to his success, showcasing Edison’s journey from a fragile child with a thirst for knowledge to a pioneering innovator. The opening of the book establishes Edison’s remarkable early life and interests, painting a picture of a boy who, despite his initial struggles in school, found passion in chemistry and invention. It introduces his family background and early influences, particularly the significant role his mother played in his education. We learn of Edison’s adventures as a newsboy on trains, where he balanced selling newspapers with his experiments, even creating a printing press amid his journeys. The beginning sets the stage for a tale filled with excitement, ingenuity, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge that defined Edison’s character and future achievements.
The Grand Trunk Railroad machine shops at Port Huron had a great attraction for young Edison. The boy who was to have much to do with the evolution of modern electric locomotive in later years was fascinated with the mechanism of the steam locomotive. Whenever he could get the chance he would ride with the engineer in the cab, and he liked nothing better than to handle the locomotive himself during the run. Edison’s own account of what happened on one of these trips is very laughable. He says:
“The engine was one of a number leased to the Grand Trunk by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass bands all over the woodwork, was beautifully painted, and everything was highly polished, which was the custom up to the time old Commodore Vanderbilt stopped it on his roads. It was a slow freight train. The engineer and fireman had been out all night at a dance. After running about fifteen miles they became so sleepy that they couldn’t keep their eyes open, and agreed to permit me to run the engine. I took charge, reducing the speed to about twelve miles an hour, and brought the train of seven cars to her destination at the Grand Trunk junction safely. But something occurred which was very much out of the ordinary. I was greatly worried about the water, and I knew that if it got low the boiler was likely to explode. I hadn’t gone twenty miles before black, damp mud blew out of the stack and covered every part of the engine, including myself. I was about to awaken the fireman to find out the cause of this, when it stopped. Then I approached a station where the fireman always went out to the cow-catcher, opened the oil-cup on the steam-chest, and poured oil in. I started to carry out the procedure, when, upon opening the oil-cup, the steam rushed out with a tremendous noise, nearly knocking me off the engine. I succeeded in closing the oil-cup and got back in the cab, and made up my mind that she would pull through without oil. I learned afterward that the engineer always shut off steam when the firemen went to oil, This point I failed to notice. My powers of observation were very much improved after this occurrence. Just before I reached the junction another outpour of black mud occurred, and the whole engine was a sight—so much so that when I pulled into the yard everybody turned to see it, laughing immoderately. I found the reason of the mud was that I carried so much water it passed over into the stack, and this washed out all the accumulated soot.”
One afternoon, about a week before Christmas, the train on which Edison was a newsboy jumped the track. Four old cars with rotten sills went all to pieces, distributing figs, raisins, dates, and candies all over the track. Hating to see so much waste, the boy tried to save all he could by eating it on the spot, but, as a result, he says, “our family doctor had the time of his life with me.”
Another incident, which shows free and easy railroading and Southern extravagance is related by Edison, as follows;
“In 1860, just before the war broke out, there came to the train one afternoon in Detroit two fine-looking young men, accompanied by a colored servant. They bought tickets for Port Huron, the terminal point for the train. After leaving the junction just outside of Detroit, I brought in the evening papers. When I came opposite the two young men, one of them said, ‘Boy, what have you go?’ I said, ‘Papers.’ ‘All right.’ He took them and threw them out of the window, and, turning to the colored man, said, ‘Nicodemus, pay this boy.’ I told Nicodemus the amount, and he opened a satchel and paid me. The passengers didn’t know what to make of the transaction. I returned with the illustrated papers and magazines. These were seized and thrown out of the window, and I was told to get my money of Nicodemus. I then returned with all the old magazines and novels I had not been able to sell, thinking perhaps this would be too much for them. I was small and thin, and the layer reached above my head, and was all I could possibly carry. I had prepared a list, and knew the amount in case they bit again. When I opened the door all the passengers roared with laughter. I walked right up to the young men. One asked me what I had. I said, ‘Magazines and novels.’ He promptly threw them out of the window, and Nicodemus settled. Then I came in with cracked hickory nuts, then popcorn balls, and, finally, molasses candy. All went out of the window. I felt like Alexander the Great!—I had no more chances! I had sold all I had. Finally I put a rope to my trunk, which was about the size of a carpenter’s chest, and started to pull this from the baggage-car to the passenger-car. It was almost too much for my strength, but at last I got it in front of those men. I pulled off my coat and hat and shoes and laid them on the chest. Then the young man asked, ‘What have you got, boy?’ I said, ‘Everything, sir, that I can spare that is for sale.’ The passengers fairly jumped with laughter. Nicodemus paid me $27 for this last sale, and threw the whole out of the door in the rear of the car. These men were from the South, and I have always retained a soft spot in my heart for a Southern gentleman.”
While Edison was a newsboy on the train a request came to him one day to go to the office of E. E. Ward & Co., at that time the largest owners of steamboats on the Great Lakes. The captain of their largest boat had died suddenly, and they wanted a message taken to another captain who lived about fourteen miles from Ridgeway station on the railroad. This captain had retired, taken up some lumber land, and had cleared part of it. Edison was offered fifteen dollars by Mr. Ward to go and fetch him, but as it was a wild country and would be dark, Edison stood out for twenty-five dollars, so that he could get the companionship of another lad. The terms were agreed to. Edison arrived at Ridgeway at 8:30 P.M., when it was raining and as dark as ink. Getting with difficulty another boy to volunteer, he launched out on his errand in the pitch-black night. The two boys carried lanterns, but the road was a rough path through dense forest. The country was wild, and it was quite usual to see deer, bear, and coon skins nailed up on the sides of houses to dry. Edison had read about bears, but couldn’t remember whether they were day or night prowlers. The farther they went, the more afraid they became, and every stump in the forest looked like a bear. The other lad proposed seeking safety up a tree, but Edison objected on the plea that bears could climb, and that the message must be delivered that night to enable the captain to catch the morning train. First one lantern went out, then the other. Edison says:
“We leaned up against a tree and cried. I thought if I ever got out of that scrape alive I would know more about the habits, animals, and everything else, and be prepared for all kinds of mischance when I again undertook an enterprise. However, the intense darkness dilated the pupils of our eyes so as to make them very sensitive, and we could just see at times the outline of the road. Finally, just as a faint gleam of daylight arrived, we entered the captain’s yard and delivered the message. In my whole life I never spent such a night of horror as that, but I got a good lesson.”
Another amusing incident of this period is told by Edison.
“When I was a boy,” he says, “the Prince of Wales, the late King Edward, came to Canada (1860). Great preparations were made at Sarnia, the Canadian town opposite Port Huron. About every boy, including myself, went over to see the affair. The town was draped in flags most profusely, and carpets were laid on the cross-walks for the Prince to walk on. There were arches, etc. A stand was built, raised above the general level, where the Prince was to be received by the Mayor. Seeing all these preparations, my idea of a prince was very high; but when he did arrive I mistook the Duke of Newcastle for him, the Duke being a fine-looking man. I soon saw that I was mistaken, that the Prince was a young stripling, and did not meet expectations. Several of us expressed our belief that a prince wasn’t much after all, and said that we were thoroughly disappointed. For this one boy was whipped. Soon the Canuck boys attacked the Yankee boys, and we were all badly licked. I, myself, got a black eye. That has always prejudiced me against that kind of ceremonial and folly.”
Many years afterward, when Edison had won fame by many inventions, including his electric-light system, and had been awarded the Albert Gold Medal by the Royal Society of Arts, it was this same prince who wrote a graceful letter which accompanied the medal. Here is another of Mr. Edison’s stories:
“After selling papers in Port Huron, which was often not reached until about nine-thirty at night, I seldom got home before eleven or eleven-thirty. About half-way home from the station and the town, and within twenty-five feet of the road, in a dense wood, was a soldiers’ graveyard, where three hundred soldiers were buried, due to a cholera epidemic which took place at Fort Gratiot, near by, many years previously. At first we used to shut our eyes and run the horse past this graveyard, and if the horse stepped on a twig my heart would give a violent movement, and it is a wonder that I haven’t some valvular disease of that organ. But soon this running of the horse became monotonous, and after a while all fears of graveyards absolutely disappeared from my system. I was in the condition of Sam Houston, the pioneer and founder of Texas, who, it was said, knew no fear. Houston lived some distance from the town, and generally went home late at night, having to pass through a dark cypress swamp over a corduroy road. One night, to test his alleged fearlessness, a man stationed himself behind a tree, and enveloped himself in a sheet. He confronted Houston suddenly, and Sam stopped and said: ‘If you are a man, you can’t hurt me. If you are a ghost, you don’t want to hurt me. And if you are the devil, come home with me; I married your sister!”
We have already seen that Edison was of an exceedingly studious nature and full of ambition to work, experiment, and hustle. The serious side of his nature did not, however, wholly prevail. He had a keen enjoyment of a joke, even as he has now, and in his boyhood days had no particular objection if it took a practical form. The following, as related by him, is one of many:
“After the breaking out of the War there was a regiment of volunteer soldiers quartered at Fort Gratiot, the reservation extending to the boundary line of our house. Nearly every night we would hear a call such as ‘Corporal of the Guard No. I.’ This would be repeated from sentry to sentry, until it reached the barracks, when Corporal of the Guard No. I would come and see what was wanted. I and the little Dutch boy, upon returning from the town after selling our papers, thought we would take a hand at military affairs. So one night, when it was very dark, I shouted for Corporal of the Guard No. I . The second sentry, thinking it was the terminal sentry who shouted, repeated it to the third, and so on. This brought the corporal along the half mile, only to find that he was fooled. We tried him three nights; but the third night they were watching, and caught the little Dutch boy, took him to the lock-up at the fort, and shut him up. They chased me to the house. I rushed for the cellar. In one small compartment, where there were two barrels of potatoes and a third one nearly empty, I poured these remnants into the other barrels, sat down, and pulled the empty barrel over my head, bottom up. The soldiers had awakened my father, and they were searching for me with candles and lanterns. The corporal was absolutely certain I came into the cellar, and couldn’t see how I could have gotten out, and wanted to know from my father if there was no secret hiding-place.
On assurance of my father, who said that there was not, he said it was most extraordinary. I was glad when they left, as I was cramped, and the potatoes that had been in the barrel were rotten and violently offensive. The next morning I was found in bed, and received a good switching on the legs from my father, the first and only one I ever received from him, although my mother kept behind the old Seth Thomas clock a switch that had the bark worn off. My mother’s ideas and mine differed at times, especially when I got experimenting and mussed up things. The Dutch boy was released next morning.”
It may have seemed strange to you, on reading this and the previous chapter, that a lad so young as Edison was during the newsboy period—from about twelve to fifteen years of age—should have been allowed such wide liberty. An extensive traveler for those days, going early and returning late, an experimenter in chemistry, a publisher, printer, news-dealer, amateur locomotive engineer, and what not, covered a large range of experience and action for one so youthful.
To others of the family than his mother he was accounted a strange boy, some believing him to be mentally unbalanced. His mother, however, understood that his was no ordinary mind, for she had studied him thoroughly. While she watched him closely, she allowed him the widest possible sphere of action and encouraged his ever increasing studies.
A member of the family, in talking recently with the writer, said that when any one expressed nervousness about young Edison during his absences she would say: “Al is all right. Nothing will happen to him. God is taking care of him.”
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The Young Telegraph Operator
After Edison’s expulsion from the train with his laboratory and belongings, his career as a newsboy came to a sudden close. But, while he felt some disappointment, he was not discouraged and was none the less busy. As we have seen, he published his local paper for a while and also continued his chemical experiments at home. In addition, he plunged deeply into the study of telegraphy under Mr. Mackenzie’s tuition.
Edison took to telegraphy enthusiastically, giving to it no less than eighteen hours a day. After some months he had made such progress that he put up a telegraph line from the station to the village, about a mile distant, and opened an office in a drug store; but the business there was very light and the office was not continued long.
A little later he became the regular operator at Port Huron. The office was in the store of a Mr. M. Walker, who sold jewelry and also newspapers and periodicals. Edison was to be found at the office both day and night, and slept there. He says:
“I became quite valuable to Mr. Walker. After working all day I worked at the office nights as well, for the reason that ‘press reports’ came over one of the wires until 3 A.M., and I would cut in and copy it as well as I could, to become proficient more rapidly. The goal of the rural telegraph operator was to be able to take press. Mr. Walker tried to get my father to apprentice me at twenty dollars per month, but they could not agree. I then applied for a job on the Grand Trunk Railroad as a railway operator, and was given a place, nights, at Stratford Junction, Canada.”
Many years afterward Mr. Walker described the boy of sixteen as engrossed intensely in his experiments and scientific reading. The telegraph office was not a busy one, but sometimes messages taken in would remain unsent while Edison was in the cellar busy on some chemical problem.
He would be seen at times reading a scientific paper and then disappearing to buy a few sundries for experiments. Returning from the drug store with his chemicals, he would not be seen again until required by his duties, or until he had found out for himself, if possible, the truth of the statement he had been reading. If wanted for his experiment, he did not hesitate to make free use of the watchmaker’s tools that lay on the table in the front window. His one idea was to do quickly what he wanted to do; and this tendency is still one of his marked characteristics.
The telegrapher’s position at Stratford Junction, Canada, was taken by Edison in 1863, when he was sixteen years old, and paid him twenty-five dollars per month. In speaking of it he has since remarked that there was little difference between the telegraph of that time and that of to-day. He says:
“The telegraph men couldn’t explain how it worked, and I was always trying to get them to do so. I think they couldn’t. I remember the best explanation I got was from an old Scotch line repairer employed by the Montreal Telegraph Company, which operated the railroad wires. He said that if you had a dog like a dachshund, long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London. I could understand that, but I never could get it through me what went through the dog or over the wire.”
Edison was ever keenly anxious to add to his stock of experimental apparatus, as an incident of this period shows:
“While working at Stratford Junction, I was told by one of the freight conductors that in the freight house at Goodrich there were several boxes of old broken up batteries. I went there and found over eighty cells of the well known Grove nitric acid battery. The operator there, who was also agent, when asked by me if I could have the electrodes of each cell, which were made of sheet platinum, gave his permission readily, thinking they were of tin. I removed them all, and they amounted to several ounces in weight. Platinum even in those days was very expensive, costing several dollars an ounce, and I owned only three small strips. I was overjoyed at this acquisition, and those very strips and the reworked scrap are used to this day in my laboratory, over forty years later.”
It was while he was employed as a night operator at Stratford Junction that Edison’s inventiveness was first displayed. In order to make sure that the operators were not asleep they were required to send the signal “6” to the train dispatcher’s office every hour during the night. Now, Edison spent all day in study and experiment, but he needed sleep, just as any healthy youth does, and so he made a small wheel with notches on the rim and attached it to the clock and line. At night he connected it with the circuit, and at each hour the wheel revolved and automatically sent in the dots required for “sixing.”
The invention was a success, but the train dispatcher soon noticed that frequently, in spite of the regularity of the report, Edison’s office could not be raised even if a message were sent immediately after. An investigation followed, which revealed this ingenious device, and he received a reprimand.
A serious occurrence that might have resulted in accident drove him soon after from Canada, although the youth could hardly be held to blame for it. Edison says:
“This night job just suited me, as I could have the whole day to myself. I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time for a few minutes at a time. I taught the night yardman my call, so I could get half an hour’s sleep now and then between trains, and in case the station was called the watchman would awaken me. One night I got an order to hold a freight train, and I replied that I would. I rushed out to find the signalman, but before I could find him and get the signal set the train ran past. I ran to the telegraph office, and reported that I could not hold her. The train dispatcher, on the strength of my message that I would hold the train, had permitted another to leave the last station in the opposite direction. There was a lower station near the junction, where the day operator slept. I started for it on foot. The night was dark, and I fell into a culvert and was knocked senseless.”
Fortunately, the two engineers saw each other approaching and stopped in time to prevent an accident. Edison, however, was summoned to the general manager’s office to be tried for neglect of duty. During the trial two Englishmen called, and while they were talking with the manager the youthful operator slipped out, jumped on a freight train going to Sarnia, and was not happy until the ferryboat from Sarnia had landed him safe on the Michigan shore.
The same winter, of 1863-64, while at Port Huron, Edison had a further opportunity of showing his ingenuity. An ice jam had broken the telegraph cable laid in the bed of the river across to Sarnia, and communication was interrupted. The river is three-quarters of a mile wide, and could not be crossed on foot, nor could the cable be repaired.
Edison suggested using the steam whistle of a locomotive to give the long and short signals of the Morse code. An operator on the Sarnia shore was quick enough to understand the meaning of the strange whistling, and thus messages were sent in wireless fashion across the ice floes in the river.
Young Edison had no inclination to return to Canada after his late experience there. He decided, however, that he would stick to telegraphy as a business, and, after a short stay at home in Port Huron, set out to find work as an operator in another city. And thus he commenced the roaming and drifting life which in the next five years took him all over the Middle States.
At this time the Civil war was in progress, and many hundreds of skilled operators were at the front with the army, engaged exclusively in government service. Consequently there was a great scarcity of telegraphers throughout all the cities and towns of the country. For this reason it was not difficult for an operator to get work wherever he might go. Thus one might gratify a desire to travel and get experience without running much risk of privation.
There were a great many others besides Edison who wandered about from city to city, working awhile in one place and drifting to another. As a rule, they were bright, happy-go-lucky fellows, full of the spirit of good comradeship, and willing to share bed, board, and pocket money with those who might temporarily be less fortunate than themselves.
Many of them used telegraphy as a stepping stone to better themselves in life, while others, unfortunately, became dissipated, and, becoming unreliable through drink, could not hold a position for long. Had Edison been by nature less persistent and industrious than he was, this miscellaneous companionship might have tended to wreck his career, but all through his life, from boyhood, he has been particularly abstemious and has had a contempt for the wastefulness of time, money, and health entailed by the drink habit.
Throughout this period of his life Edison, although wandering from place to place, never ceased to study, explore, and experiment. Referring to this beginning of his career, he mentions a curious fact that throws light on his ceaseless application. “After I became a telegraph operator,” he says, “I practiced for a long time to become a rapid reader of print, and got so expert I could sense the meaning of a whole line at once. This faculty, I believe, should be taught in schools, as it appears to be easily acquired. Then one can read two or three books in a day, whereas if each word at a time only is sensed reading is laborious.”
During this wandering period of his life Edison made many friends, one of the earliest of whom was Milton F. Adams, who had a strange career. Of him Edison says:
“Adams was one of a class of operators never satisfied to work at any place for any great length of time. He had the ‘wanderlust.’ After enjoying hospitality in Boston in 1868-69, on the floor of my hall bedroom, which was a paradise for the entomologist, while the boarding house itself was run on the Banting system of flesh reduction, he came to me one day and said: ‘Goodbye, Edison, I have got sixty cents, and I am going to San Francisco.’ And he did go. How, I never knew personally. I learned afterward that he got a job there, and then within a week they had a telegraphers’ strike. He got a big torch and sold patent medicine on the streets at night to support the strikers. Then he went to Peru as partner of a man who had a grizzly bear which they proposed entering against a bull in the bull-ring in that city. The grizzly was killed in five minutes, and so the scheme died. Then Adams crossed the Andes, and started a market report bureau in Buenos Aires. This didn’t pay, so he started a restaurant in Pernambuco, Brazil. There he did very well, but something went wrong (as it always does to a nomad), so he went to the Transvaal, and ran a panorama called ‘Paradise Lost’ in the Kaffir kraals. This didn’t pay, and he became the editor of a newspaper; then he went to England to raise money for a railroad in Cape Colony. Next I heard of him in New York, having just arrived from Bogota, United States of Colombia, with a power of attorney and two thousand dollars from a native of that republic, who applied for a patent for tightening a belt to prevent it from slipping on a pulley—a device which he thought a new and great invention, but which was in use ever since machinery was invented. I gave Adams then a position as salesman for electrical apparatus. This he soon got tired of, and I lost sight of him.”
It was when he was about seven years old that Edison’s parents moved to Port Huron, Michigan, and it was there, a few years later, that he began his active life by becoming a newsboy.
With his mother he found study easy and pleasant. The quality of the education she gave him may be judged from the fact that before he was twelve years old he had studied the usual rudiments and had read, with his mother’s help, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume’s History of England, Sears’s History of the World, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, and the Dictionary of Sciences.
They even tried to struggle through Newton’s Principia, but the mathematics were too much for both teacher and student. To this day Edison has little personal use for arithmetic beyond that which is called “mental.” He said to a friend, “I can always hire some mathematicians, but they can’t hire me.”
His father always encouraged his literary tastes, and paid him a small sum for each book which he mastered. Although there is no fiction in the list, Edison has all his life enjoyed it, particularly the works of such writers as Victor Hugo. Indeed, later on, when he became a telegraph operator, he was nicknamed by his associates “Victor Hugo Edison”—possibly because of his great admiration for that writer.
When he was about eleven years old he became greatly interested in chemistry. He got a copy of Parker’s School Philosophy, an elementary book on physics, and tried almost every experiment in it. He also experimented on his own account. It is said that he once persuaded a boy employed by the family to swallow a large quantity of Seidlitz powders in the belief that the gases generated would enable him to fly. The awful agonies of the victim attracted attention, and Edison’s mother marked her displeasure by an application of the switch kept behind the old Seth Thomas “grandfather’s clock.”
It was as early as this that young Alva, or “Al,” as he was called, displayed a passion for chemistry, which has never left him. He used the cellar of the house for his experiments and collected there no fewer than two hundred bottles from various places. They contained the chemicals with which he was constantly experimenting, and were all marked “Poison,” so that no one else would disturb them.
He soon became familiar with all the chemicals to be had at the local drug stores, for he did not believe the statements made in his books until he had tested them for himself.
Edison used such a large part of his mother’s cellar for this, his first laboratory, that, becoming tired of the “mess,” she once ordered him to clear out everything. The boy was so much distressed at this that she relented, but insisted that he must keep things under lock and key when he was not there.
Most of his spare time was spent in the cellar, for he did not share to any extent in the sports of the boys of the neighborhood. His chum and chief companion at this time was a Dutch boy, much older than himself, named Michael Oates, who did chores around the house. It was Michael upon whom the Seidlitz powder experiment was tried.
As Edison got deeper into his chemical studies his limited pocket-money disappeared rapidly. He was being educated by his mother, and, therefore, not attending a regular school, and he had read all the books within reach. So he thought the matter out and decided that if he became a train newsboy he could earn all the money he wanted for his experiments and also get fresh reading from papers and magazines. Besides, if he could get permission to go on the train he had in mind, he would have some leisure hours in Detroit and would be able to spend them at the public library free of charge. His parents objected, particularly his mother, but finally he obtained their consent.
It has been thought by many people that his family was poor, and that it was on account of their poverty that young Edison came to sell newspapers on the train. This is not true, for his father was a prosperous dealer in grain and feed, and was also actively interested in the lumber industry and other things. While he was not rich, he made money in his business, and, having a well-stocked farm and a large orchard besides, was in comfortable circumstances. Socially the family stood high in the town, where at the time many well-to-do people resided.
It was of his own choice and because of his never-satisfied desire for experiment and knowledge that Edison became a newsboy.
In 1859, when he was twelve years old, he applied for the privilege of selling newspapers on the trains of the Grand Trunk Railroad between Port Huron and Detroit. After a short delay the necessary permission was obtained.
Even before this he had had some business experience. His father had laid out a “market-garden” on the farm, and young Edison, at eleven years of age, and Michael Oaths had worked in it pretty steadily. In the season the two boys would load up a wagon with onions, lettuce, peas, etc., and drive through the town to sell their produce. As much as $600 was turned over to Mrs. Edison in one year from this source.
Edison was industrious but he did not take kindly to farming. He tells us about this himself:
“After a while I tired of this work. Hoeing corn in a hot sun is unattractive, and I did not wonder that boys had left the farm for the city. Soon the Grand Trunk Railroad was extended from Toronto to Port Huron, at the foot of Lake H on, and thence to Detroit, at about the time the War of the Rebellion broke out. By a great amount of persistence I got permission from my mother to go on the local train as newsboy. The local train from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles, left at 7 A. M. and arrived again at 9:30 P.M. After being on the train for several months, I started two stores at Port Huron—one for periodicals and the other for vegetables, butter, and berries in the season. These were attended by two boys, who shared in the profits. The periodical store I soon closed, as the boy in charge could not be trusted. The vegetable store I kept up for nearly a year. After the railroad had been opened a short time they put on an express, which left Detroit in the morning and returned in the evening. I received permission to put a newsboy on this train. Connected with this train was a car, one part for baggage and the other part for United States mail, but for a long time it was not used. Every morning I had two large baskets of vegetables from the Detroit market loaded in the mail car and sent to Port Huron, when the boy would take them to the store. They were much better than those grown locally, and sold readily. I never was asked for freight, and to this day cannot explain why, except that I was so small and industrious and the nerve to appropriate a United States mail car to do a free freight business was so monumental. However, I kept this up for a long time, and in addition bought butter from the farmers along the line and an immense amount of black-berries in the season. I bought wholesale and at a low price, and permitted the wives of the engineers and trainmen to have the benefit of the discount. After a while there was a daily immigrant train put on. This train generally had from seven to ten coaches, filled always with Norwegians, all bound for Iowa and Minnesota. On these trains I employed a boy who sold bread, tobacco, and stick candy. As the war progressed the daily newspaper sales became very profitable, and I gave up the vegetable store.”
This shrewd commercial instinct, and the capacity for carrying on successfully several business undertakings at the same time, were certainly remarkable in a boy only thirteen years old. And now, having had a glimpse of Edison’s very early youth, let us begin a new chapter and follow his further adventures as a newsboy on a railway train.
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The Young Newsboy
Edison’s train left Port Huron at seven o’clock in the morning and arrived at Detroit in about three hours. It did not leave Detroit again until quite late in the afternoon, arriving at Port Huron about nine-thirty at night. This made a long day for the boy, but it gave him an opportunity to do just what he wanted, which was to read, to buy chemicals and apparatus, and to indulge in his favorite occupation—chemical experimentation.
The train was made up of three coaches—baggage, smoking, and ordinary passenger. The baggage-car was divided into three compartments—one for trunks and packages, one for the mail, and one for smoking.
As there was no ventilation in this smoking-compartment, no use was made of it. It was therefore turned over to young Edison, who not only kept his papers there and his stock of goods as a “candy butcher,” but he also transferred to it the contents of the precious laboratory from his mother’s cellar. He found plenty of leisure on the two daily runs of the train to follow up his study of chemistry.
His earnings on the train were excellent, for he often took in eight or ten dollars a day. One dollar a day always went to his mother, and, as he was thus supporting himself, he felt entitled to spend any other profit left over on chemicals and apparatus. Detroit being a large city, he could obtain a greater variety there than in his own small town. He spent a great deal of time in reading up on his favorite subject at the public library, where he could find plenty of technical books. Thus he gave up most of his time and all his money to chemistry.
He did not confine himself entirely to Chemistry in his reading at the Detroit public library, but sought to gain knowledge on other subjects. It is a matter of record that in the beginning of his reading he started in with a certain section of the library and tried to read it through, shelf by shelf, regardless of subject.
Edison went along in this manner for quite a long time. When the Civil War broke out he noticed that there was a much greater demand for newspapers. He became ambitious to publish a local journal of his own. So his little laboratory in the smoking-compartment received some additions which made it also a newspaper office.
He picked up a second-hand printing-press in Detroit and bought some type. With his mechanical ability, it was not a difficult matter to learn the rudiments of the printing art, and as some of the type was kept on the train he could set it up in moments of leisure. Thus he became the compositor, pressman, editor, proprietor, publisher, and news-dealer of the Weekly Herald. The price was three cents a copy, or eight cents a month for regular subscribers and the circulation ran up to over four hundred copies an issue. Only one or two copies of this journal are now to be found.
It was the first newspaper in the world printed on a train in motion. It received the patronage of the famous English engineer, Stephenson, and was also noted by the London Times. As the production of a boy of fourteen it was certainly a clever sheet, and many people were willing subscribers, for, by the aid of the railway telegraph, Edison was often able to print late news of local importance which could not be found in regular papers, like those of Detroit.
Edison’s business grew so large that he employed a boy friend to help him. There was often plenty of work for both in the early days of the war, when the news of battle caused great excitement.
In order to increase the sales of newspapers, Edison would telegraph the news ahead to the agents of stations where the train stopped and get them to put up bulletins, so that, when the stations were reached, there would usually be plenty of purchasers waiting.
He recalls in particular the sensation caused by the great battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, in April, 1862, in which both Grant and Sherman were engaged, in which the Confederate General Johnston was killed, and in which there was a great number of men killed and wounded.
The bulletin-boards of the Detroit newspapers were surrounded by dense crowds, which read that there were about sixty thousand killed and wounded, and that the result was certain. Edison, in relating his experience of that day, says:
“I knew if the same excitement was shown at the various small towns along the road, and especially at Port Huron, the sale of papers would be great. I then conceived the idea of telegraphing the news ahead, went to the operator in the depot, and, on my giving him Harper’s Weekly and some other papers for three months, he agreed to telegraph to all the stations the matter on the bulletin-board. I hurriedly copied it, and he sent it, requesting the agents to display it on the blackboards used for stating the arrival and departure of trains. . I decided that, instead of the usual one hundred papers, I could sell one thousand; but not having sufficient money to purchase that number, I determined in my desperation to see the editor himself and get credit. The great paper at that time was the Detroit Free Press. I walked into the office marked ‘Editorial’ and told a young man that I wanted to see the editor on important business—important to me, anyway.
“I was taken into an office where there were two men, and I stated what I had done about telegraphing, and that I wanted a thousand papers, but only had money for three hundred, and I wanted credit. One of the men refused it, but the other told the first spokesman to let me have them. This man, I afterward learned, was Wilbur F. Storey, who subsequently founded the Chicago Times and became celebrated in the newspaper world. With the aid of another boy I lugged the papers to the train and started folding them. The first station, called Utica, was a small one, where I generally sold two papers. I saw a crowd ahead on the platform, and thought it was some excursion, but the moment I landed there was a rush for me; then I realized that the telegraph was a great invention. I sold thirty-five papers there. The next station was Mount Clemens, now a watering-place, but then a town of about one thousand population. I usually sold six to eight papers there. I decided that if I found a corresponding crowd there the only thing to do to correct my lack of judgment in not getting more papers was to raise the price from five cents to ten. The crowd was there, and I raised the price. At the various towns there were corresponding crowds. It had been my practice at Port Huron to jump from the train at a point about one-fourth of a mile from the station, where the train generally slackened speed. I had drawn several loads of sand to this point to jump on, and had become quite expert. The little Dutch boy with the horse met me at this point. When the wagon approached the outskirts of the town I was met by a large crowd. I then yelled: ‘Twenty-five cents apiece, gentlemen! I haven’t enough to go around!’ I sold out, and made what to me then was an immense sum of money.”
But this and similar gains of money did not increase Edison’s savings, for all his spare cash was spent for new chemicals and apparatus. He had bought a copy .of Fresenius’s Qualitative Analysis, and, with his ceaseless testing and study of its advanced problems, his little laboratory on the train was now becoming crowded with additional equipment, especially as he now added electricity to his studies.
“While a newsboy on the railroad,” says Edison, “I got very much interested in electricity, probably from visiting telegraph offices with a chum who had tastes similar to me.”
We have already seen that he was shrewd enough to use the telegraph to get news items for his own little journal and also to bulletin his special news of the Civil War along the line. To such a ceaseless experimenter as he was, it was only natural that electricity should come in for a share of his attention. With his knowledge of chemistry, he had no trouble in “setting up” batteries, but his difficulty lay in obtaining instruments and material for circuits.
To-day any youth who desires to experiment with telegraphy or telephony can find plenty of stores where apparatus can be bought ready made, or he can make many things himself by following the instructions in Harper’s Electricity Book for Boys. But in Edison’s boyish days it was quite different. Telegraph supplies were hard to obtain, and amateurs were usually obliged to make their own apparatus.
EDISON WHEN ABOUT FOURTEEN OF FIFTEEN YEARS OF AGE.
However, he and his chum had a line between their homes, built of common stove-pipe wire. The insulators were bottles set on nails driven into trees and short poles. The magnet wire was wound with rags for insulation, and pieces of spring brass were used for telegraph keys.
With the idea of securing current cheaply, Edison applied the little he knew about static electricity, and actually experimented with cats. He treated them vigorously as frictional machines until the animals fled in dismay, leaving their marks to remind the young inventor of his first great lesson in the relative value of sources of electrical energy. Resorting to batteries, however, the line was made to work, and the two boys exchanged messages.
Edison wanted lots of practice, and secured it in an ingenious manner. If he could have had his way he would have sat up until the small hours of the morning, but his father insisted on eleven-thirty as the proper bed-time, which left but a short interval after a long day on the train.
Now, each evening, when the boy went home with newspapers that had not been sold, his father would sit up to read them. So Edison on some excuse had his friend take the papers, but suggested to his father that he could get the news from the chum by telegraph bit by bit. The scheme interested the father, and was put into effect, the messages over the wire being written down by Edison and handed to the old gentleman to read.
This gave good practice every night until twelve or one o’clock, and was kept up for some time, until the father became willing that his son should sit up for a reasonable time. The papers were then brought home again, and the boys practiced to their hearts’ content, until the line was pulled down by a stray cow wandering through the orchard.
Now we come to the incident which may be regarded as turning Edison’s thoughts more definitely to electricity. One August morning, in 1862, the mixed train on which he worked as newsboy was doing some shunting at Mount Clemens station. A laden box-car had been pushed out of a siding, when Edison, who was loitering about the platform, saw the little son of the station agent, Mr. J. U. Mackenzie, playing with the gravel on the main track, along which the car, without a brakeman, was rapidly approaching.
Edison dropped his papers and his cap and made a dash for the child, whom he picked up and lifted to safety without a second to spare, as the wheel struck his heel. Both were cut about the face and hands by the gravel ballast on which they fell.
The two boys were picked up by the train hands and carried to the platform, and the grateful father, who knew and liked the rescuer, offered to teach him the art of train telegraphy and to make an operator of him. It is needless to say that the proposal was most eagerly accepted.
Edison found time for his new studies by letting one of his friends look after the newsboy work on the train for part of the trip, keeping for himself the run between Port Huron and Mount Clemens. We have already seen that he was qualified as a beginner, and, besides, he was able to take to the station a neat little set of instruments he had just finished at a gun shop in Detroit.
What with his business as newsboy, his publication of the Weekly Herald, his reading and chemical and electrical experiments, Edison was leading a busy life and making rapid progress, but unexpectedly there came disaster, which brought about a sudden change. One day, shortly after he had rescued Mr. Mackenzie’s child, as the train was running swiftly over a piece of poorly laid track, there was a sudden lurch, and, before Edison could catch it, a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its shelf, fell to the floor and burst into flame.
The car took fire, and Edison was trying in vain to put out the blaze when the conductor, a quick-tempered Scotchman, rushed in with water and saved the car. On arriving at the next station, Mount Clemens, the enraged conductor promptly put the boy off with his entire outfit, including his laboratory and printing-plant.
It was through this incident that Edison acquired his lifelong deafness, for the conductor boxed his ears so severely as to cause this infirmity. To most people this would be an affliction, but not so to Mr. Edison, who said about it recently:
“This deafness has been of great advantage to me in various ways. When in a telegraph office I could hear only the instrument directly on the table at which I sat, and, unlike the other operators, I was not bothered by the other instruments. Again, in experimenting on the telephone, I had to improve the transmitter so that I could hear it. This made the telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver of Bell was too weak to be used as a transmitter commercially. It was the same with the phonograph. The great defect of that instrument was the rendering of the overtones in music and the hissing consonants in speech. I worked over one year, twenty hours a day, Sundays and all, to get the word “specie” perfectly recorded and reproduced on the phonograph. When this was done I knew that everything else could be done—which was a fact. Again, my nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a country village is to a person with normal hearing.”
But we left young Edison on the station platform, sorrowful and indignant, as the train moved off, deserting him in the midst of his beloved possessions. He was saddened, but not altogether discouraged, and after some trouble succeeded in making his way home, where he again set up his laboratory and also his printing-office. There was some objection on the part of the family, as they feared that they might also suffer from fire, but he promised not to bring in anything of a dangerous nature.
He continued to publish the Weekly Herald, but after a while was persuaded by a chum to change its character and publish it under the name of Paul Pry, making it a journal of town gossip about local people and their affairs and peculiarities.
No copies of Paul Pry can now be found, but it is known that its style was distinctly personal, and the weaknesses of the towns-people were discussed in it very freely and frankly by the two boys. It caused no small offense, and in one instance Edison was pitched into the St. Clair River by one of the victims whose affairs had been given such unsought publicity.
Possibly this was one of the reasons that caused Edison to give up the paper not very long afterward. He had a great liking for newspaper work, and might have continued in that field had it not been for strong influences in other directions. There is no question, however, that he was the youngest publisher and editor of his time.
This is the life story of the greatest of inventors in the field of electricity. It is true that Thomas A. Edison has helped the progress of the world by many other inventions and discoveries quite outside of electricity, but it is in this field that he is best known. Now, in this age of electricity, it happens very fortunately that a close personal association with Mr. Edison makes it possible at last to tell younger readers the real story of Mr. Edison’s life, partly in his own words. It has been a life full of surprises as well as of great achievements, and one of the surprises which we meet at the start is that, unlike Mozart, who showed his musical genius in infancy, and unlike others devoted to one thing from the outset, Edison took up electricity almost by accident.
Yet this is not so strange when we think how little electricity there was to take up in the middle of the nineteenth century. Electricity was not studied in the schools. It was not a separate art or business. Men of science had occupied themselves with electricity for a long time, but they really did not know as much about it as a bright boy in the upper grammar grades to-day. Speaking in a very general way, we may say that simple frictional electricity was an old story, that Franklin had discovered the identity of electricity and lightning, and that Galvani had discovered in 1790 and Volta had developed in 1801 the generating of electric currents from batteries composed of zinc and copper plates immersed in sulphuric acid.
But it was not until 1835, only twelve years before Edison was born, that Samuel F. B. Morse applied electrical currents to the sending of an alphabet of dots and dashes by wire. Thus it was in the infancy of telegraphy that Edison first saw the light.
Telegraph apparatus in those early days was of a crude and cumbersome kind—quite different from that which young students experiment with at the present time. For instance, the receiving magnets of the earliest telegraphs, which performed the same office as the modem sounders, weighed seventy-five pounds instead of a few ounces.
It was a very difficult undertaking for Morse to establish the telegraph after he had invented it. It was such a new idea that the public could not seem to understand its use and possibilities. People would not believe that it was possible to send messages regularly over a long stretch of wire, and, even if it were possible, that it would be • of much use anyway. It took him a long time to raise money to put up a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington. Before this, he had offered to sell the whole invention outright to the United States Government for one hundred thousand dollars; but the Government did not buy, as the invention was not thought to be worth that much money.
In 1847 the year Edison was born, there were only a few telegraph circuits in existence. The farthest line to the west was in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. It was in this early telegraph office that Andrew Carnegie was a messenger boy. We could name a great many more notable men in our country who began their careers in a similar way, or as telegraph operators, in the early days of telegraphy, but space forbids.
Within a few years after Edison was born there came a great boom in telegraphy, and new lines were put up all over the country. Thus, by the time he had grown to boyhood the telegraph was a well-established business, and the first great electrical industry became a pronounced success.
There were no other electrical industries at this time, except electro-plating to a limited extent. The chief reason of this was probably that the only means of obtaining electrical current was by means of chemical batteries, as mechanical generators had not been developed at that time.
While the principles of the dynamo-electric machine had been discovered, and a few of these machines and small electric motors had been made by scientists, in the middle of the nineteenth century such machines were little more than scientific toys, and not to be compared with the generators of modern days.
Edison, therefore, was born at the very beginning of “The Age of Electricity,” which can be said to have actually begun about 1840, or soon after.
It is not too much to say that the many important and practical inventions that he has since contributed to the electrical arts have had no small weight in causing the present time to be known as “The Age of Electricity.”
——
Edison’s Family
Had there not been a family difference of opinion about the war of Independence, we might never have had Edison the great inventor.
The first Edisons in this country came over from Holland about the year 1730. They were descendants of a family of millers on the Zuyder Zee, and when they came to America they first settled near Caldwell, New Jersey.
Later on they removed to some land along the Passaic River. It is a curious and interesting coincidence that a hundred and sixty years later Mr. Edison established the home he now occupies in the Orange Mountains, which is in the same general neighborhood.
The family must have gotten along well in the world, for we find the name of Thomas Edison, as a bank official on Manhattan Island, signed to Continental currency in 1778. This was Mr. Edison’s great-grandfather, who lived to be one hundred and four years of age.
It will be seen from the date, 1778, that this was during the time of the War of Independence. This Thomas Edison was a stanch patriot, who thoroughly believed in American independence. He had a son named John, who differed with his father in political principles and favored a continuance of British rule.
After the war was over John left the country, and, with many other Loyalists, emigrated to Nova Scotia and settled there. While he still lived there a son was born to him, at Digby, in 1804. This son was named Samuel, who became the father of Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor.
Seven years later John Edison, as a Loyalist, became entitled under the laws of Canada to a grant of six hundred acres of land, and moved westward with his family to take possession of it. He made his way through the State of New York in wagons drawn by oxen to the township of Bayfield, in upper Canada, on Lake Huron, and there settled down.
Some time afterward John Edison moved from Bayfield to Vienna, Ontario, on the northern bank of Lake Erie. As will be understood from the above, he was the grandfather of Mr. Edison, who gives this recollection of the old man 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 a carriage from Milan, Ohio, to a railroad, then to a port on Lake Erie, thence by a canal-boat in a tow of several miles 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 one hundred and two 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-traveled 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 died at the age of one hundred and two. Little is known of the early manhood of his son Samuel (Thomas A. Edison’s father), until we find him keeping a hotel at Vienna, and in 1828 marrying Miss Nancy Elliott, who was a school-teacher there.
He was six feet in height and was possessed of great strength and vigor. He took a lively share in the troublous politics of the period.
In 1837 the Canadian Rebellion broke out. The cause of it was the same as that which led to the war of Independence in America—taxation without representation.
Samuel Edison was so ardently interested and of such strong character that he became a captain in the insurgent forces that rallied under the banners of Papineau and Mackenzie.
The rebellion failed, however, and those who had taken part in it were severely dealt with. Many of the insurgents went in exile to Bermuda, but Samuel Edison preferred the perils of a flight to the United States. He therefore departed from Canada with his wife, hurriedly and secretly.
There was a romantic and thrilling journey of one hundred and eighty-two miles toward safety. The country through which they passed was then very wild and infested with Indians of unfriendly disposition, and the journey was made almost entirely without food or sleep.
They arrived safely in the United States, however, and, after a few years spent in various towns along the shores of Lake Erie, finally came to Milan, Ohio, in 1842. Here they settled down and made their home, for the place gave great promise of abundance of business and prosperity.
In those days railroads were few and far between, and there was none near Milan. The great quantities of grain that were grown in the surrounding country were sent to Eastern ports by sailing vessels over the lake. Milan was connected by a wide canal with the Huron River, which emptied into Lake Erie. Thus the town became a busy port, with grain ware houses and elevators, at which as many as twenty sailing vessels were loaded in a single day.
There also sprang up a brisk ship-building industry, for which the abundant forests of the region supplied the necessary lumber.
You will see, therefore, that Mr. Edison’s father gave evidence of shrewd judgment when he decided to make his permanent home at Milan, for there was plenty of occupation, with every prospect of prosperity. He was always ready to look on the brightest side of everything, and could and did turn his hand to many occupations.
He decided to make his chief business the manufacture of shingles, for which there was a large demand, both in the neighborhood, and along the shores of the lake. The shingles were made mostly of Canadian wood, which was imported for the purpose. They were made entirely by hand and of first-class wood, and so well did they last that a house in Milan on which these shingles were put in 1844 was still in excellent condition forty-two years later. Samuel Edison did well in this business and employed a number of men.
In a few years after the family had made their home at Milan, Thomas Alva Edison was born there, on February 11, 1847.
His mother was an attractive and highly educated woman, and her influence upon his disposition 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 Elliott 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 Baptist ministry. As a young woman she became a teacher in the public high school at Vienna, Ontario, and thus met her husband, who was residing there.
The Edison family consisted of three children, two boys and a girl. Besides Thomas Alva, there was an elder brother, William Pitt, and a sister named Tannie. Both brother and sister had considerable ability, although in different lines. William Pitt Edison was clever with his pencil, and there was at one time an idea of having him become an art student; but evidently the notion was not carried out, for later in life he was manager of the local street-railway lines at Port Huron, Michigan, in which he was heavily interested.
This talent for sketching seems to run in the family, for Thomas A. Edison’s first impulse in discussing any mechanical question is to take up the nearest piece of paper and make drawings. Scarcely a day passes that this does not happen. His immense number of notebooks contain thousands of such sketches.
His sister, who in later life became Mrs. Tannie Edison Bailey, had, on the other hand; a great deal of literary ability, and spent much of her time in writing
As a child the great inventor was not at all ‘ strong, and was of fragile appearance: His head was well shaped but very large, and it is said that local doctors feared he might have brain trouble.
On account of his supposed delicacy, he was not allowed to go to school at as early an age as is usual. And when he did go, it was not for a long time. He was usually at the foot of his class, and the teacher had spoken of the boy to a school inspector as being “addled.”
Perhaps the reader can imagine the indignation of his mother on hearing of this teacher’s report. She had watched and studied her boy closely, and knew that he had a mind usually receptive and mental powers far beyond those of other children. So she resolved to take him out of school and educate him herself.
It was fortunate that Mr. Edison had a mother who was not only loving, observing, and wise, but at the same time well informed and ambitious. From her experience as a teacher, she was able to give him an education better than could be had in the local schools of that day.
Under her care the boy formed studious habits and a taste for good literature that have lasted to this day. He is a great reader, and what had once been read by him is never forgotten if it is in any way useful.
When Edison was a child he was deeply interested in the busy scenes of the canal and grain warehouses, and particularly in the ship-building yards.
He asked so many questions that he fairly tired out his father, although the older man had no small ability. It has been reported that other members of the family regarded the boy as being mentally unbalanced and likely to be a lifelong care to his parents.
Even while he was quite a young child his mechanical tendencies showed themselves in his fondness for building little plank road from the pieces of wood thrown out by the ship-building yards and the sawmills. One day he was found in the village square laboriously copying the signs of the stores.
To this day Mr. Edison is not inclined to accept a statement unless he can prove it for himself by experiment. Once, when he was about six years old, he watched a goose sitting on her eggs and saw them hatch. 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 and hen eggs he had collected, trying to hatch them out.
His remarkable memory was noticeable even when he was a child, for before he was five years old he had learned all the songs of the lumber gangs and of the canal men. Even now his recollection goes back to 1850, when, as a child three or four years old, he saw ramped in front of his home six covered wagons, “prairie schooners,” and witnessed their departure for California, where gold had just been discovered.
Another of his recollections of childhood is of a sadder nature. He went off one day with another boy to bathe in the creek. Soon after they entered the water the other boy disappeared. Young Edison waited around for about half an hour, and then, as it was growing dark, went home, puzzled and lonely, but said nothing about the matter. 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 guilty. The creek was at once dragged, and then the body was recovered.
Edison himself had more than one narrow escape. Of course, he fell into the canal and was nearly drowned—few boys in Milan worth their salt omitted that performance. On another occasion he fell into a pile of wheat in a grain elevator and was almost smothered. Holding the end of a skate-strap, that another lad might cut it with an ax, he lost the top of a finger. Fire also had its peril. He built a fire in a barn, but the flames spread so rapidly that, although he escaped himself, the barn was wholly destroyed. He was publicly whipped in the village square as a warning to other youths. Equally well remembered is a dangerous encounter with a ram which attacked him while he was busily engaged digging out a bumblebee’s nest near an orchard 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.
Meanwhile railroad building had been going on rapidly, and the new Columbus, Sandusky & Hocking Railroad had reached Milan and quickly deprived it of its flourishing grain trade. The town, formerly so bustling and busy, no longer offered to so active a man as Mr. Edison’s father the opportunity of conducting a prosperous business, so he decided to move away. He was well-to-do, but he determined to do better elsewhere. In 1854 he and his family removed to Port Huron, Michigan, where they occupied a large Colonial house standing in the middle of an old Government fort reservation of ten acres, overlooking the St. Clair River just after it leaves Lake Huron.
The old house at Milan where Mr. Edison was born is still in existence, and is occupied at this time (1911) by Mr. S. O. Edison, a half-brother of Edison’s father, and a man of much ability.
This birthplace of Edison still remains the plain, substantial brick house it was originally, one-storied, with rooms finished on the attic floor.
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