Charles Edison

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Charles Edison
Walter Evans Edge
46th United States Secretary of the Navy
In office
January 2, 1940 – June 24, 1940
Acting: July 7, 1939 – January 2, 1940
PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded byClaude A. Swanson
Succeeded byFrank Knox
Assistant Secretary of the Navy
In office
January 18, 1937 – January 1, 1940
PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded byHenry L. Roosevelt
Succeeded byLewis Compton
Personal details
Born(1890-08-03)August 3, 1890
West Orange, New Jersey, U.S.
DiedJuly 31, 1969(1969-07-31) (aged 78)
New York City, U.S.
Political partyRepublican (before 1940)
Democratic (1940–1962)
Conservative (1962–1969)
SpouseCarolyn Hawkins
ParentThomas Edison (father)
Signature

Charles Edison (August 3, 1890 – July 31, 1969) was an American politician. He was the Assistant and then United States Secretary of the Navy, and served as the 42nd governor of New Jersey. Commonly known as "Lord Edison", he was a son of the inventor Thomas Edison and Mina Miller Edison.

Early life

Edison c. 1900

Charles Edison was born on August 3, 1890, at Glenmont, the Edison family home in West Orange, New Jersey. He was Thomas Edison's fifth child and second from his marriage to Mina Miller. He graduated from the Hotchkiss School in 1909.[1]

In 1915–1916, he operated the 100-seat "Little Thimble Theater" with Guido Bruno at 10 Fifth Avenue, New York. The theater staged the works of George Bernard Shaw and August Strindberg, and Charles contributed verse to Bruno's Weekly under the pseudonym Tom Sleeper. Late in 1915, he brought his players to Ellis Island to perform for Chief Clerk Augustus Sherman and more than four hundred detained immigrants.

These avant-garde activities came to a halt when his father put him to work. For a number of years,[

McGraw-Edison Electric Company. Edison was board chairman of the merged company until he retired in 1961.[2]

Department of the U.S. Navy (1937–1940)

On January 18, 1937,

1940 presidential election; in return, Roosevelt had BB-62 named the USS New Jersey.[4]

Governor of New Jersey (1941–1944)

In 1940, he won election as Governor of New Jersey, running in reaction to the

New Jersey State Constitution. Although it failed in a referendum and nothing was changed during his tenure, state legislators did reform the constitution later.[2]

Later political life

Between 1951 and 1969, he lived in the

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where he struck up a friendship with Herbert Hoover, who also lived there.[5] In 1962, Edison was one of the founders of the Conservative Party of New York State.[6]

In 1967, Edison hosted a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York that led to the founding of the Charles Edison Youth Fund, later the Charles Edison Memorial Youth Fund. Attending the meeting were Rep.

William F. Buckley, organizer David R. Jones, and Edison's political advisor Marvin Liebman. The name of the organization was changed in 1985 to The Fund for American Studies,[7]
in keeping with Edison's request to drop his name after 20 years of use.

Personal life

Edison married Carolyn Hawkins on March 27, 1918. They had no children.

In 1924, Edison joined the New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. He was assigned national member number 39,292 and state society number 2,894.[8]

In 1948, he established a charitable foundation, originally called "The Brook Foundation", now the Charles Edison Fund.[9]

Death

Charles Edison, 1931

Charles Edison died on July 31, 1969, in

Rosedale Cemetery in Orange, New Jersey
.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Alumni Award: PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS". The Hotchkiss School. 2004. Archived from the original on March 10, 2015. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  2. ^ a b "GEDIS.pdf" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 12, 2006. Retrieved September 23, 2007.
  3. Naval Historical Center
    . Accessed August 6, 2007.
  4. ^ Comegno, Carol. "Historian details the role politics played in battleship's creation", Courier-Post, January 6, 2000. Accessed May 27, 2007. "Professor Jeffery Dorwart, of Rutgers-Camden said the ship was named after the state by President Franklin Roosevelt to repay a political debt to Charles Edison, the son of inventor Thomas Edison."
  5. ^ John D. Venable, Out of the Shadow: the Story of Charles Edison (Charles Edison Fund, 1978), p. 271.
  6. ISBN 978-8772898094
    )
  7. ^ History Archived July 18, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, The Fund for American Studies
  8. ^ "Join Ancestry®".
  9. ^ "Charles Edison". Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved September 23, 2007.
  10. ^ "Charles Edison, 78, Ex-Governor Of Jersey and U.S. Aide, Is Dead". The New York Times. August 1, 1969. Retrieved July 21, 2007. Charles Edison, former Governor of New Jersey, ... Mr. Edison, who had been admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, was 78 years ...

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charles Edison.
Political offices
Preceded by Assistant Secretary of the Navy
1937–1940 		Succeeded by
Preceded by United States Secretary of the Navy
1939–1940 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by Democratic nominee for Governor of New Jersey
1940 		Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by Governor of New Jersey
1941–1944 		Succeeded by
Walter Evans Edge
Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by President of the National Municipal League
1946–1950 		Succeeded by
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