Edison, Thomas, Mother of

Nancy Matthews Elliott Edison (1810–71) was born in Chenango County, New York, to Revolutionary War hero Ebenezer Matthews Elliott and his wife, Mercy Putnam. She mothered seven children, including prolific American inventor, Thomas Edison. Edison, who held 1,093 patents during his lifetime, including those for the phonograph and incandescent lightbulb, credited his mother for his success: “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had some one to live for, some one I must not disappoint.” Nancy Edison indulged her son's curiosities, encouraged his experiments, and homeschooled her son when teachers described him as too “addled” to learn.

As a young woman, Nancy received some formal education, and worked as a teacher. Following the American Revolution, the Elliott family, like other war refugees, fled the newly independent colonies to settle in Ontario, Canada. There, Nancy met Samuel Edison, and they married in 1828.

Samuel Edison's family was very different from his wife's. The Edison family had remained loyal to the British government during the American Revolution and subsequently fled to Canada several years before the Elliott family. The young couple started a family, and within a decade, was raising four children: Wallace, William, Harriet, and Carlisle. Politically minded Samuel was active in the unsuccessful Papineau-MacKenzie Rebellion of 1837, and like his father during the American Revolution, was afterwards forced to flee Canada. Samuel later left his family in Canada to prepare a home for them in the United States.

Nancy Edison moved her children to Milan, Ohio, to join Samuel in 1839. Now a small coastal town along the shore of Lake Erie in northwest Ohio, Milan during the 19th century was a major port. Samuel Edison established a business manufacturing roof shingles. Nancy purchased a small plot of land in 1841, and Samuel designed a home. Today, that home is a national historic site maintained by the Edison Birthplace Association. Following the move to Ohio, Nancy gave birth to three more children: Samuel, Eliza, and Thomas. Young Thomas Edison was often ill and was a terrible student. There is evidence that Edison was partially deaf as a result of scarlet fever and multiple, untreated ear infections. Classroom learning was difficult for Thomas.

Fed up with unsuccessful teachers, Nancy began schooling her son at home. Many of her lessons came from R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and the Cooper Union. Nancy encouraged her son to read books, for which he was always grateful: “My mother taught me how to read good books quickly and correctly, and this opened up a great world in literature; I have always been thankful for this early training.” In 1854, the Edison family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, the easternmost point of land in the state along Lake Huron. Nancy gained a reputation as a caring neighborhood mother, baking for many of the local children. She died in 1871 after struggling for years with mental illness. At the time, Thomas Edison was 24 years old, and about to marry his first wife, Mary Stilwell. Though Nancy Edison sowed the seeds for her inventor son's success, she did not live to see him reap the benefits.

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