Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 - October 18, 1931) was married twice.
He married Mary Stilwell (September 6, 1855 - August 9, 1884), who was 16 and a former employee at his subsidiary: the News Reporting Telegraph Company, on December 25, 1871. It is said that she was constantly ill. However, this did not prevent her from from having three children, who all survived childhood.
Edison loved his wife deeply; but sadly, she would pass away at the young age of 29 on August 9, 1884, possibly of a brain tumor or an overdose of morphine.2
They had been married only 13 years.
Two years later, when Thomas Edison was 39, he married a second time to Mina (pronounced MI-na) Miller Edison(July 6, 1865 - August 24, 1947) on February 24, 1886. She was 20 years old.
The daughter of an inventor, she was the perfect match for Edison: managing everything from the new home to three stepchildren from Edison's previous marriage. He even nicknamed her "Billie". She was member of an extensive amount of charitable organizations.
During their marriage, which lasted until his death in 1931, Thomas and Mina Miller Edison also had three children of their own:
After Thomas Edison's death, Mina married Edward Everett Hughes (March 14, 1862 - January 19, 1940), her childhood sweetheart and lawyer, the son of a well-to-do Pennsylvania family, on August 30, 1935. They lived at Glenmont in New Jersey (the house Thomas Edison had bought as a wedding gift to Mina, but had transferred into her ownership to protect the house from being sold, in case Edison went bankrupt) until Hughes death in 1940, after which she again took the name of Mrs. Edison.
She would remain at Glenmont until her death in 1947. She was 82 years old.
Note: 1Because none of Thomas and Mary Stilwell Edison's children had any issue, they have no living direct descendants.
2Mrs. Stilwell Edison's death certificate states that she died of "congestion of the brain". However, if, as some believe, she died of a morphine overdose (which is quite plausible), it would not be, most likely, because of a drug addiction; but, because morphine was a common prescription in the 19th century for many different diseases and it was quite easy to make an unintentional mistake.
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