The Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition

[This folder has not been completely edited. Letters are currently being added, and documents identified as "to be edited" may not have images or complete database information. In addition, the information in the folder target (editorial description) may not be up-to-date.]

These letters are primarily from Ira Mandeville Miller (1856-1934) to his younger sister, Mina Miller Edison, and his brother-in-law, Thomas A. Edison. There are also letters written by his wife, Cora Wise Miller (1864-1935), and his younger daughter, Elizabeth (1892-1962), as well as letters to Elizabeth and Ira from Mina and her secretary. The selected items cover the years 1886-1931. The letters contain references to Edison's health, including an attack of pneumonia in 1929 and his final illness in 1931; to his experiments with rubber; and to Seminole Lodge, the Edison home in Fort Myers, Florida. Also included are remarks about a radio address that Edison delivered from Florida on his eighty-second birthday in 1929 . In addition, there are comments about the wedding and honeymoon of Ira and Cora, the family's financial difficulties, and the marital problems of older daughter Margaret (1887-1981), who married Henry O. Newman in 1926.

There are approximately 100 letters and other documents by or about Ira and Cora Miller and their children in Book #10 on the Charles Edison Fund microfilm. Click here for a list of all the correspondence books on the CEF microfilm. Additional letters, formerly in the CEF Collection, can be found in the Family Records Series in Part IV and Part V of the Thomas A. Edison Papers microfilm edition. Two other letters from 1899 can be found in the David E. E. Sloane Collection.