[X453-F]

https://edisondigital.rutgers.edu/folder/X453-F

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Part Of: Miller Family Papers

[X453-F] Edison, Mina Miller and Edison, Thomas Alva

[This folder has not been completely edited. Approximately 45 documents have recently been added, and these documents do not have images or complete database information. In addition, the information in the folder target (editorial description) is not up-to-date.]

These documents, which cover the years 1883-1948, consist primarily of correspondence and other documents to, from, and about Mina Miller Edison. Included is one undated letter, signed "Billy," addressed to her husband, Thomas Alva Edison. Other items relating to Thomas Edison include an undated invitation, probably from 1927, to a birthday party in his honor at Glenmont and several clippings from Fort Myers newspapers pertaining to his 1928 visit. In addition, there is a May 1924 letter from Edison to chemical manufacturer and newspaper publisher James Milford Place in which he reminiscences about his boyhood and opines that "a thrifty boy usually makes a thrifty man."

Also included are an invitation to Mina's 1883 graduation from Akron High School, along with a program for the school's 50th reunion in 1933; her 1886 marriage license; a news clipping about her 1935 wedding to Edward Everett Hughes; and clippings and other documents pertaining to an honorary degree of doctor of humane letters that Mina received from Mt. Union College in 1944. In a 1924 interview originally published in Success magazine, Mina gives her views about home and motherhood and mentions her first meeting with Edison "when pursuing her studies in Boston." Mina's involvement in the New Jersey Republican senatorial primary of 1930 is documented in a letter by Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, wife of the successful candidate Dwight W. Morrow and mother-in-law of aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Among the documents from the 1940s is a telegram from actor Spencer Tracy to the Edison Pioneers regarding the movies, then in production, of Young Tom Edison and Edison the Man. An Associated Press interview from February 1947, published in connection with the centennial of the birth of Thomas Edison, contains reminiscences about Mina's courtship and marriage. A letter by Mina to a friend in England also comments on the centennial and reflects on the recent death of her younger sister, Mary Miller Nichols. Mina's plan to transfer the Edison family's winter home, Seminole Lodge, to the City of Fort Myers "as a sanctuary in memory of Mr. Edison" is also mentioned in this letter, as well as in the letter by Mina's longtime friend Lucy D. Bogue that follows. Other documents include a letter of condolence from Mina to Clara Ford written a week after the death of her husband Henry Ford in April 1947, a series of letters by Lucy Bogue relating to Mina's final illness and death on August 24, 1947, and an obituary of Mina from the Jamestown (N.Y.) Post-Journal.

Click here for a 162-page typescript diary kept by Mina Edison during a trip to Europe with her second husband, Edward Everett Hughes.

Chautauqua Institution Archives, Chautauqua, N.Y. -- Oliver Archives Center

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