By Paul Goldfinger, Editor@Blogfinger.
The Edison winter estate on the Caloosahatchee River in Ft. Myers, Fla. contains a lovely and understated home, done all in white. It is furnished with many electric lights and his inventions such as the phonograph. His lifestyle was not fancy. He and his wife Mina loved to garden.
Edison spent a great deal of time working in his lab. He was friends with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone.
Tom and Henry were neighbors and friends, living next door to each other, and the three men were working together to find a plant or tree for making rubber. Edison received over 1,000 patents, and he was a workaholic, but despite all that, he managed to illuminate the world.
Edison liked to fish, and he and his son would fish for marlin off their pier at on the river. Sometimes Tom would head out in his small boat, powered by his electric motor. When his son was 12 the boy caught a 100 pound marlin off the pier. It is now preserved and mounted on their porch.
As for the maid, she must have been busy. The property is large (21 acres), so they probably had gardeners. It’s a great spot for an outdoor party, on the water, a la the Great Gatsby, but the Edisons were not into that sort of lifestyle. They did have a chauffeur and a cook. The chauffeur lived at the property while Tom and Mina went back to New Jersey.
There is a Victorian house in Ocean Grove which we wrote about. It has a maid’s room with two doors, one of which leads to the bedroom of her boss.
Here is a link to another Edison photo on Blogfinger:
CAST OF “Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”