Friends, Families & Forays: Scenes from the Life and Times of Henry Ford

4. John Burroughs

4 John Burroughs John Burroughs, a naturalist and writer, came to Henry Ford’s attention in 1912 after Ford had begun taking a serious interest in birds. That interest seems to have stemmed from his foster grandfather Patrick Ahern’s nostalgic recollection of the melodious songs of birds in Ireland. Patrick had taught Henry the names of a great many birds, and Henry could cleverly imitate their calls. By early 1911, Ford already had installed hundreds of birdhouses on his Dearborn farm properties, and that year his bird sanctuary was said to have harbored more than ninety species. Ford had never met Burroughs, but, having read some of his writings in December 1912, he informed Burroughs that he was shipping a Model T automobile to him so that he could “get around more easily to witness nature.” Burroughs’s son Julian taught him to drive. The very day Julian left, however, Burroughs had his first accident. He wrote: In driving the car in the old barn, I get rattled and let it run wild; it bursts through the side of the barn like an explosion. There is a great splintering and rattling of boards and timbers, and the car stops with its forward axle hanging out over a drop of fifteen feet. As the wheels went out, the car dropped on its flywheel, and that saved me. The wheel caught on less than a foot of the steep hill, and I should have landed on the other side of Jordan. . . . The top of the radiator is badly crumpled, otherwise the car is unhurt. I am terribly humiliated and, later, scared of my narrow escape. The thing I had feared for weeks happened. Thus does fear deliver us into the hands of the thing we fear. About his Model T, after more than his share of mishaps, Burroughs remarked, “How ready it is to take to the ditch, or a tree, or a fence.” A year later, Burroughs was complaining: I saw what a fraud the car is — how much it had cheated me out of. On foot and lighthearted, you are right down amid things. How 44 Published previously in The Ford Legend, Vol. VII, No. 2, 1998. familiar and congenial the ground, the trees, the weeds, the road, the cattle look! The car puts me in false relations to all these things. I am puffed up. I am a traveler. I am in sympathy with nothing but me; but on foot I am part of the country, and I get it into my blood. If it were not for Mrs. Burroughs I should hang up the car. Burroughs visited Detroit in June 1913. Ford showed him around the automobile plant in Highland Park, and they were photographed together with the Quadricycle. In Detroit, Burroughs spoke to about 2,600 schoolchildren at Central High School. Henry and Clara entertained him for two days at their summer Bungalow on the west bank of the Rouge River in Dearborn. In a letter home, Burroughs stated: “I like Mr. Ford and his wife much. . . . His interest in the birds makes him forget everything else for the moment. He wants to give me more things — among them a closed car for winter use.” Burroughs later received a Model T town car. When in the autumn of 1913 Ford heard that Burroughs wished to own outright the farm on which he lived in order to keep it in the family, he was quick to respond: “Nothing in the world easier — but don’t tell anyone about it.” In November 1913, Henry and Clara helped Burroughs and his wife, Ursula, acquire the 319-acre farm at Roxbury, 45 John Burroughs in the Model T touring car that Henry Ford sent him in January 1913. The photograph was taken not far from his home in Roxbury, New York. His signature on the photograph is dated August 27, 1913. New York. Burroughs arranged for his nephew to stay there and continue to operate it as a dairy farm, John and Ursula reserving Woodchuck Lodge for their own use. In June 1916, after Fair Lane was built, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison dedicated an elaborate electrically heated birdbath in what is known as Burroughs Grotto at Fair Lane. Burroughs himself laid the cornerstone of the grotto, which was lined with stone from the Burroughs farm in New York State. On the site was placed a standing bronze...