Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1893 — EDISON’S FATHER. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

EDISON’S FATHER.

He Is a Hale and Hearty Man, Although H« Is Ninety Years Old. Samuel Edison, of Port Huron, Mich., .the father of the famous inventor, Thomas Edison, is a venerable old man, but hale and hearty notwithstanding his many years. He was born in Nova Scotia in 1803, and came to this country in 1811. It was at Milan, 0., that Thomas Alva, the distinguished electrician, was bom in 1847. He Was considered to be rather a stupid boy. “Teachers,” said

Mr. Edison in a recent interview, “told us to keep him in the streets, for he would never make a scholar. All he ate went to support his brain and not hia tbody, and he was apuny. He was forever asking me questions, and when I

would tell him I didn't know, he would say, ‘Why don’t you know?”’ When he was 12 years old he used to say to his mother: ‘Ma, I’m a bushel of wheat; I weigh just sixty pounds.’ His mother was splendidly educated and had great natural ability, and Tom was like her." Mr. Edison has always smoked tobacco and drunk aleoholic liquors, and neither seems to have hurt him either in body or mind. He is married to his second wife and has five children, three being the fruit of his present marriage and two that of the preceding. His youngest child is 11 years of age.

SAMUEL EDISON.