existence, during which such a man as the founder of Cornell University
had been glad to get breakfast in New York with a quarter-dollar picked
up on Broadway.



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,