-
William Adams Simonds
- Wayne State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
William Adams Simonds 1887-1963 "In 1936, in an effort to capture the motoring public's interest , William A. Simonds, who edited the magazine Ford News since 1926, began carrying fewer articles on Ford products and more features on the company's activities.,, —DavidL Lewis* William A. Simonds was a westerner, a writer who found his way to Dearborn and a friendship with Henry Ford in a rather circuitous way with the help of Fred Black. Besides being editor of Ford News, he received wide acclaim for his biographies of Henry Ford and Thomas A. Edison, men who were in the public limelight at that time. Simonds 's later role as first manager of Greenfield Village, with its hundreds of youthful guides to be trained, required him to become a teacher of American history as well. William Adams Simonds was born September 19, 1887, in Central City, Nebraska. He was the second son of Henry Simonds, a schoolteacher , and Lily Goodnough Simonds. Henry Simonds had grown up on the family farm near Athol in north-central Massachusetts. Henry's father had come to the United States from England before 1700. Lily Goodnough was daughter of Ellen Saxon Goodnough and Rev. August Goodnough, who had been a missionary among the Oneidas in the Wisconsin wilderness. Her mother died at an early age, and Lily was sent back east to live with her aunt in Athol. It was there she met Henry Simonds. They courted while Henry was attending Amherst College and Lily was attending Mt. Holyhoke College. The Simonds family moved to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where Henry Simonds was superintendent of schools. At Stevens Point, as early as age ten, William showed a special interest in writing. In the style of reporters, he described battles of the Spanish American War. He folded his handwritten stories into a small newspaper of his own which he presented to friends. About that time, his family moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where his father obtained a better position. Wil- * From David L. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976), p. 333. 243 Henry's Lieutenants Ham finished grammar school in Oshkosh. He did not study Greek as his father had, but he did absorb six years of Latin. This scholastic endeavor was well balanced by his setting pins at a bowling alley and pumping the organ at the Methodist church. He graduated from high school at age seventeen, as valedictorian of his class. Although he won a scholarship to Lawrence University, he instead obtained a third-grade teaching certificate and taught at the Butte des Morte school, ten miles northwest of town, for twenty-five dollars a month. Room and board were obtained for ten dollars at a nearby farmhouse. Simonds's older brother Albert lived near Bothell, Washington, a beautiful locality in the coastal mountains overlooking Lake Washington and Seattle. Simonds's father had visited Albert and had decided he would like to move to Bothell and operate a chicken ranch. So the entire family (William now had three sisters) moved to a remote, wooded forty-acre ranch high on a hill near Bothell. Albert immediately found work for William at the Griffin Wheat Company in South Tacoma, and in 1907 a position with the Albers Brothers Milling Company . The father soon became superintendent of schools in Bothell. In 1908, Simonds entered the University of Washington as a freshman majoring in English literature. He made quite a lasting impression on that institution, according to his own story. As a reporter on the college paper, the Daily, he became sufficiently popular to be appointed editor at forty dollars a month, and he changed his major to journalism. His first glimpse of Henry Ford came that summer of 1909, when a Model T won the automobile race from New York to Seattle and Henry Ford was there to meet the winning drivers. In addition to being editor of the Daily, Simonds was also campus editor for the Seattle Times. During the summer of 1910, he obtained an additional fifteen dollars a week at the Times, and he felt financially substantial enough to marry Margery Muncaster of Seattle. While Simonds was still in college, their first son, William Adams Simonds, Jr., was born. After school was out in 1911, Simonds obtained a full-time position with the Seattle Times. Although he had been one of the bestknown students on campus, he apparently did not graduate from the University of Washington because he...