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Introduction This work contains fifty-five short stories describing people and pursuits that colored the life of Henry Ford. These accounts are not generally known and have not been published in a book until now. My goal is to provide a detailed and wide-ranging look at the personal history of Henry Ford employing facts that otherwise might have been overlooked. Here, mostly in Part I of this volume but also in appearances throughout the book, the reader will meet prominent and diverse figures of the past century, including Thomas Edison, John Burroughs, George Washington Carver, Helen Keller, and Mahatma Gandhi — all of whose lives intersected that of Henry Ford at some interesting point in his biography. Also brought to life in these pages, in Part II, are the branches of Ford’s family tree, from his Irish ancestors to the descendants who carry his legacy. It was the automobile, of course, that made Henry Ford an industrial icon, but he could boast of mechanical exploits in other arenas as well: railroads, speedboats, robotics. These are explored in Part III, and Part IV examines some of Ford’s adventures in financing such endeavors as a flour mill, a rubber plantation, even a stump farm. Ford’s investments went beyond a quest for profits, however, and his humanitarian efforts are detailed in Part V, in which the reader will learn about the economic philosophy known as Fordism, the innovations of Ford Motor Company’s “Sociological Department,” and the founding of institutions as grand as Henry Ford Hospital and as modest as camps for boys. Finally, Part VI of this book offers a glimpse at the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by Henry and Clara Ford as their wealth and fame grew. Their homes included the Fair Lane residence in Dearborn, a Florida house next door to the Edisons, and a Georgia plantation. A yacht and a private railway car served as homes away from home. And they relaxed, socialized, and entertained themselves with pastimes such as dancing and antique collecting at an inn and a tavern, a country club and a mountain club. Several of the chapters in this volume have appeared previously in the Dearborn Historian, a periodical sponsored by the Dearborn Historical Commission; others have been printed in the Ford Legend, a 7 newsletter of the Henry Ford Heritage Association; and two were published some time ago in the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village Herald. The majority of these accounts, however, have been written very recently from relatively obscure primary sources found in the Ford Archives at the Benson Ford Research Center of the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan (called HFM & GV in the end-of-chapter references), where I have worked as a volunteer for the past twenty years. The photographs in the book are from the collections of the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, unless otherwise identified; numbers following the photo captions identify specific negatives. F. R. B. 8 Introduction ...

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