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And Grew Up in

Thomas Edison was born in 1847 in Port Huron, Michigan. His father Samuel Jr. had fled from Canada to the United States after taking part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837 against the British. Edison received little formal schooling and was primarily self-taught through reading books and experimenting. He developed hearing problems at a young age which eventually caused him to become completely deaf. In his teenage years, Edison sold newspapers and candy on trains and briefly worked as a telegraph operator, though he was let go after being responsible for an almost collision. He began independently publishing and selling the Grand Trunk Herald newspaper on trains to make additional money.

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Billy Frankovick
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47 views1 page

And Grew Up in

Thomas Edison was born in 1847 in Port Huron, Michigan. His father Samuel Jr. had fled from Canada to the United States after taking part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837 against the British. Edison received little formal schooling and was primarily self-taught through reading books and experimenting. He developed hearing problems at a young age which eventually caused him to become completely deaf. In his teenage years, Edison sold newspapers and candy on trains and briefly worked as a telegraph operator, though he was let go after being responsible for an almost collision. He began independently publishing and selling the Grand Trunk Herald newspaper on trains to make additional money.

Uploaded by

Billy Frankovick
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan.

He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden


Edison Jr. (18041896, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810
1871, born in Chenango County, New York).[5] His father, the son of a Loyalist refugee, had
moved as a boy with the family from Nova Scotia, settling in southwestern Ontario (then
called Upper Canada), in a village known as Shewsbury, later Vienna, by 1811. Samuel Jr.
eventually fled Ontario, because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of
1837.[6] His father, Samuel Sr., had earlier fought in the War of 1812 as captain of the First
Middlesex Regiment. By contrast, Samuel Jr.'s struggle found him on the losing side, and he
crossed into the United States at Sarnia-Port Huron. Once across the border, he found his way
to Milan, Ohio. His patrilineal family line was Dutch by way of New Jersey; the surname had
originally been "Edeson."[7]
Edison only attended school for a few months and was instead taught by his mother.[8] Much of
his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper
Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.[9]
Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been
attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear
infections. Around the middle of his career, Edison attributed the hearing impairment to being
struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire
and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and
chemicals. In his later years, he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the
conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.[10][11]
Edison's family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and
business declined.[12] Edison sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to
Detroit, and sold vegetables. He briefly worked as a telegraph operator in 1863 for the Grand
Trunk Railway at the railway station in Stratford, Ontario, at age 16. He was held responsible
for a near collision. He also studied qualitative analysis and conducted chemical experiments
on the train until he left the job.[13][14]
Edison obtained the exclusive right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four
assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other
papers.[14] This began Edison's long streak of

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