Thomas Edison - Marriages and Children

Marriages and Children

On December 25, 1871, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell (1855–1884), whom he had met two months earlier; she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children:

• Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965), nicknamed "Dot"
• Thomas Alva Edison, Jr. (1876–1935), nicknamed "Dash"
• William Leslie Edison (1878–1937) Inventor, graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, 1900.

Mary Edison died at age 29 on August 9, 1884, of unknown causes: possibly from a brain tumor or a morphine overdose. Doctors frequently prescribed morphine to women in those years to treat a variety of causes, and researchers believe that some of her symptoms sounded as if they were associated with morphine poisoning.

On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty-nine, Edison married the 20-year-old Mina Miller (1866–1947) in Akron, Ohio. She was the daughter of the inventor Lewis Miller, co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution and a benefactor of Methodist charities. They also had three children together:

• Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who married John Eyre Sloane.
• Charles Edison (1890–1969), who took over the company upon his father's death and who later was elected Governor of New Jersey. He also took charge of his father's experimental laboratories in West Orange.
• Theodore Edison (1898–1992), (MIT Physics 1923), credited with more than 80 patents.

Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on August 24, 1947.