January 1: Edsel Ford

On this date in  History .... 1919:

Edsel Ford, the only child of Henry Ford, takes over the presidency of the Ford Motor Co. after his father resigned the previous December over a dispute with stockholders. 

Edsel had an opposite view of his father’s “any color as long as it’s black” philosophy, and believed Fords could be stylish as well as functional. He convinced his father to buy the Lincoln, a luxury car company, in 1922 and was instrumental in developing some of the elegant cars, including the Lincoln Continental which was described by Frank Lloyd Wright as “the most beautiful car ever made.”

In 1943, Edsel died at the age of 49 of cancer and Henry again became president of Ford, serving until Edsel’s oldest son, Henry Ford II, succeeded his grandfather in 1945.

 

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December 31: Henry Ford

On this date in History ..... 1927:

Henry Ford publishes the last issue of his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. 

 

Ford used the paper as a platform for his anti-Semitic views. Ford was “an unapologetic bigot”, hating labor unions, immigrants and everything Jewish, blaming Jewish bankers with everything that was wrong with the world, and convinced that the Jewish population would take over the world by way of commerce and exchange. He believed wars were started by Jews just so they could profit from them.

 

In 1927 a Jewish lawyer sued him for defamation. Ford faked an auto accident to avoid testifying and ended up settling out of court. He issued an insincere apology: “--"to my great regret," he wrote, "I have learned that Jews...resent this publication as promoting anti-Semitism.”  

 

Many of its articles and essays were collected and published in a book called "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem." It was a bestseller in Nazi Germany and remains in print today.  In January 1937, a Ford statement to the Detroit Jewish Chronicle disavowed "any connection whatsoever with the publication in Germany of a book known as theInternational Jew." 

 

Hitler even quoted the Dearborn Independent in Mein Kampf and Henry Ford was the only American that Hitler specifically named.

 

On Ford’s 75^th birthday, the German Consul gave Ford the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner.

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November 2: Locomobile

On this date in History ... 1902:

The Locomobile company, famous for their expensive, luxury, steam engine cars, delivers its first gas powered car to a New York buyer. The car was designed by race car driver and engineer Andrew Riker. 

Riker’s cars were considered to be the best built cars in America. A 2-yr old Riker was the first American car to win the 1908 Vanderbilt Cup, a 258 mile, 11 lap race in Long Island. The 4-cylinder, 120 horsepower, two-seater winning car of the international race made Europe take notice of America and its car manufacturing efforts and skills.  The car, dubbed “Old 16”, is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.

Unreliable and inconvenient as the Locomobile steam engines were (it took 30 minutes to heat the water to steam and the tank needed refilled about every 20 minutes), it was the first car to be used in war.  The British used it in the Boer Wars in the late 1800s in the capacity of a searchlight tractor, a generator and a catering vehicle.  One of the bright spots about the car, at least in British eyes, was the ability to brew a cup of tea by using the water in the boiler.

The company went out of business in 1929.

October 21: Henry Ford / Thomas Edison

On this date in History .... 1929:

Henry Ford throws a party for the dedication of the Thomas Edison Institute in Dearborn MI. Ford had moved Edison’s actual lab bldg’s from Menlo Park NJ and had them reconstructed just as they had looked in 1879.  By the time the Institute opened to the public in 1933, it had become part of the Henry Ford Museum.  

 

 

(Personal Note: Husband Phil and I went to this museum on our honeymoon and were told that when Edison last stood up from his chair in the lab (seen in this pic), Ford had it nailed in place. No one has sat in the chair since.)

 

 

 

The dedication party was thrown on the 50^th birthday of the lightbulb, and just days before the country experienced the stock market crash of 1929 that threw the country into The Depression. Guests to the event were from the Who’s Who list of notables: John D. Rockefeller Jr., Charles Schwab, Otto H. Kahn, Walter Chrysler, Orville Wright, Marie Curie, Will Rogers, and President Herbert Hoover, to name just a few. 

 

The Henry Ford Museum (a.k.a. Greenfield Village) is not only a history of Ford himself but celebrates the “practical genius of great Americans.”  The museum contains every Ford car ever built, including the 15^th million Model T and the very first Mustang, plus great displays of other automotive advances, including locomotive, printing presses, home appliances and full size buildings related to the auto industry, such as road side motels, a full size Texaco gas station, a drive-in movie theater, a full size diner car, and the oh so memorable Burma Shave signs!  Historical automotive displays, such as the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and Sikorsky’s prototype helicopter.

(Photo from "legends of america" website)

 

The museum is also the proud owner of a “genuine fake” 17^th century Brewster chair. Seven years after purchasing this rare, antique find, the museum discovered it was a fake, made by a man who wanted to see if he could fool the experts. And he did. The museum, however, turned the potential embarrassment into a positive by keeping the chair on display as a lesson in fake antiques. The chair is loaned out to national exhibits about fakes and forgeries.


This history teacher strongly recommends making this museum part of your next vacation!  Plan at least two days to tour the museum and Greenfield Village.