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456 HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
proud of the fact that here, on the 11th of February, 1847, was born
the Avorld's greatest inventor, Thomas A. Edison.
The baby-AI, as he AVIIS called in his boyhood, AVIIS like his mother, of
a quiet retiring disposition, and as the child grew so did the affection
between mother and son. On one occasion Mr. Edison remarked, "I
did not have my mother very long bul in that length of time she east
over me an influence Avhich has lasted all my life." He says of himself,
"I was ahvays a careless hoy but my mother's sweetness'and goodness
Avere potent powers to keep me in the right path." In the short
time he attended school he AVIIS nearly ahvays at the foot of his class.
On one occasion the teacher remarked to the inspector thai the boy was
"addled" and that, there AVIIS no use to keep him in school. The youth
overheard the remark, repeated it to his mother, who promptly took
the child back to the school and told the teacher he didn't knoAv Avhtit
he Avas talking about, that the lad had more brains than the teacher.
Referring to this critical period of his existence, Mr. Edison says.
"Had it not been for.my mother's appreciation and faith in me, \ should
very likely never have become an inventor. She Avas so true so sure
of me, I felt that I had some OIK? to live for, some one I must not. disappoint.
The memory of her will ahvays he a blessing to me."
The brother-in-laAV of Thomas Edison tells a story illustrating bis
investigating mind at an early age. lie says that when Tom AVIIS visiting
his sister, Mrs. Homer Page, at her country home he conceived the
idea he could hatch an egg as well as a goose. So he made a nest, put
some goose eggs in it and began to set. When his sister collared him
he cried and said if a goose could hatch an egg he did not see Avhy he
could not.
Well knoAvn to all are the advances Edison has made in science and
^electricity, the greatest of Avhich arc the incandescent lights and lighting
station, the improvements in telegraphy and the telephone and the
phonograph.
Milan Avill ahvays be proud of Mr, Edison's achievements and remembers
with 1 hanks the gift of $600 to the high school laboratory in 1908.
Old Oran Follett, who died several years ago in Sandusky, Avas for
many years prominent in the management of the Mad River Railroad.
In Ins later years he devoted a great deal -of time to Avriting and publishing
a book to SIIOAV that Shakespeare did not Avrite the plays popularly
attributed to him, but Ihat they Avere written by Lord Bacon.
Like all Avriters on that subject he did not need any evidence to prove
that, Lord Bacon Avrote them but let it go with the assertion.
In the prominence of many of the victims, there is a striking similarity
in the Titanic and the Lusitania disasters. The Titanic carried 1o their
deaths John Jacob Astor, American millionaire, and Henry B. Harris.
famous theatrical man. Victims of the Lusitania include Alfred GAvynne
Vanderbilt, multi-millionaire: Charles Frohman, the "Little Napoleon"
of the stage; Miles Justus Forman, famous author, and Charles Klein.
the playAvright.
, A Sandusky neAvspaper told of the recovery of the body of Mr.