HENRY FORD,
THOMAS EDISON,
HARVEY FIRESTONE, JR.,
AND JOHN BURROUGHS
COME TO MARTINSVILLE VIRGINIA
On August
29, 1918, with the shadow of World War One looming over the entire world, a
group of famous men and their entourage visited Martinsville, Virginia, as part
of a thirteen day “circle tour” into the “Land of Dixie.” The group included
Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, Thomas Edison, the world-famous
inventor, Harvey Firestone, Jr. the man who put tires on the cars and
naturalist John Burroughs.
The group made a two-week summer trip calling themselves the “Vagabonds”
from 1915 until 1924. In 1919, the trip included fifty vehicles including a
kitchen camping car with a gas stove and ice box built into the vehicle. Later
trips included President of the United States, Warren G. Harding. The group
were the subject of news reels that promoted Ford cars and Firestone tires,
filmed by a cameraman from Ford Motor Company.
Ford called Edison his “boyhood idol” and the two had summer homes
Florida together. Edison navigated with his compass sitting in the “perch,” the
front seat of the first car. Edison often recited chemical formulas or told
tall tales to the group. The group slept in personal tents with power for
lights supplied by Edison generators.
The group left Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, on August 18 on a nearly two-week excursion. They traveled
through West Virginia to Hot Springs, White Sulphur Springs, Princeton,
Bluefield, and then into Virginia visiting Lebanon, Abington, and Bristol,
before visiting the Great Smoky Mountains and Asheville, North Carolina, where
they stayed at the Grove Park Inn. The group had dinner at the Rotary Club in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, before making their way back into Virginia and a
visit to Martinsville on August 29, 1918.
Naturalist
John Burroughs kept records and photographs of their trip. “A plunge into the
South for a Northern Man is in many ways a plunge into the Past. As soon as you
get into Virginia, there is a change.” Burroughs was in his seventies during
the excursions. He taught the group bird calls and how to identify birds.
Firestone said, “We never knew where we are going.”
The entourage included six cars:
two Packards, two Model Ts, and two Ford trucks. They had seven drivers/helpers
and plant pathologists, Professor R. J. DeLoach. This was 1918 when the vehicles could move
along about 18 miles an hour on roads that were mostly dirt or a “Macadon”
surface. Counties, not states, took care of the roads. Many roads were taken
care of by the people, who lived along the roads, so it was hit or miss when it
came to quality of the road ways this group encountered. Many times, there were toll gates with costs
such as two cents for cars and five cents for trucks.
Henry Ford was age 55 in 1918 and wanted to “reconnect with nature” on
this journeys. Ford chopped wood and
loved to hike and even rode wheat harvesters. Once when a radiator broke, Ford
fixed it himself.
Sometimes wives joined the group. Firestone once brought a butler. At
night around the campfire, the “Vagabonds” ate ribeye steaks and talked about
everything from Mozart to Shakespeare.
Once when a vehicle broke down, a local man inquired of the group and was
told, “I am Thomas Edison. I am Henry Ford.” The local looked at Burroughs, who
had a long white beard and skeptically asked, “Are you Santa Claus?”
From
Martinsville, the “Vagabonds” went on to Roanoke and the Natural Bridge before
overnighting at the Castle Inn in Lexington, Virginia. One of their stops
included the Old Hambrick Mill, which is no longer standing in Franklin County,
Virginia, along the Blackwater River near Gogginsville, Virginia.
On September 1, 1918, the group
went on to Staunton, Virginia. The group completed their trip “road weary” in
Hagerstown, Maryland.
There were apparently other
visits by individual members of the group such as Thomas Edison in May 1906
when he stopped in the area on his way to Lincolnton, North Carolina, to
investigate supplies of cobalt to use in a storage battery. He was called “the
greatest man in the country” by a local man. Edison replied to the compliment
asking, “What about Teddy?” referring to then President Theodore
Roosevelt. Another visit by Edison,
Firestone, and Ford reportedly in 1910 on their way to Fort Meyers, Florida, where
they had homes.
You can learn more at this link of John Burroughs Our
vacation days of 1918.
