Thomas Edison Memorabilia,"HERALD." MCRR/GRAND TRUNK PAPER &1929 CELEBRATION DOC

Description

AUCTION CONTAINS A NEWSPAPER (9”x 9”) PUBLISHED BY THOMAS EDISON EITHER ORIGINALLY IN 1862 OR GIVEN DURING THE 1929 EDISON CELEBRATION ON OCTOBER 21 AT GREENFIELD (DEARBORN) MICHIGAN AND A WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH DOCUMENT GIVEN AWAY AT THE SAME. I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO COMPLETELY DETERMINE THE ORIGIN OF THE HERALD. PAPER SEE BELOW FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
WEEKLY HERALD Doc. 2
Edison published the Weekly Herald while working as a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad during the winter and
spring of I862.1
He later claimed 500 subscribers for the
single sheet, which contained news and advertising from
towns on the line. With some editorial assistance from train
conductor Alexander Stevenson, Edison printed the newspaper in the baggage car on a galley proof press bought from
J. A. Roys, a Detroit bookseller and stationer.2
In his autobiographical reminiscences, Edison stated that he bought the
type from a junkman, but he later recalled that he purchased
"upper and lower case type from William F. Stor[e]y of the
Detroit Free Press."3
When Edison discontinued the paper,
he and an apprentice at the Port Huron Commercial published
an apparently scurrilous and short-lived gossip sheet called
Paul Pry.4
1. Another issue, dated "June," was photographically reproduced in
"The Genesis of a Genius," Magazine of Michigan i (Oct. 1929): 21.
Close but not precise copies of that issue are at MiDbEI. Simonds 1940,
322.
2. Alexander Stevenson to TAE, 2 Mar. 1881, DF (TAEM 57:76)