Sarah B. Jordan Boarding House

Sarah B. Jordan Boarding House. . , Plaque 1: , In the fall of 1878, Thomas Edison asked Sarah Jordan, a relative of his wife Mary, to open and operated a boarding house in Menlo Park. She was the daughter of the first wife of Mary’s father Nicholas Stilwell. Moving from Newark, N.J., Sarah rented one of two newly constructed, identical neighboring duplexes across the street from the lab. To staff the boarding house, she employed her daughter, Ida, and a forty-two year old servant, Kate Williams. Between 1878 and 1881, at least seventeen of Edison’s laboratory employees took their room and board at the Jordan Boarding House. Sarah Jordan’s boarding house also served as a community lunchroom and as a center for after-work activity. At least six others boarded at the second duplex, which was rented by tool makers Charles Dean and William Wright, who also lived there with their families. The proximity of the two homes to the lab facility allowed their inhabitants to easily travel to work, especially when their services were required well into the night as Edison was fond of doing. Although neither boarding house was owned by Edison, the community, nevertheless, had the atmosphere and appearance, of a small, close knit, company village., Plaque 2: , This sign marks the physical location where the Dean house once stood and commemorate (sic) the historical importance of both structures. The Dean house was directly adjacent to the Sarah Jordan Boarding House. The Dean house and the Jordan House were essentially identical and the layout is depicted above. The two boarding houses were reportedly among the four houses lighted by Edison’s newly perfected electrical system and incandescent bulb during the New Year’s demonstrations that took place on December 31, 1879, and January 1, 1880. A steam engine in the machine shop drove three direct-current dynamos which provided the current to light the bulbs in the laboratory complex and home., Plaque 3: , After Edison abandoned the laboratory complex at Menlo Park, the buildings were used as residences and farm buildings. During the 1910’s, most of the laboratory buildings were severely damaged by fire and scavenging by local residents. In 1922, Henry Ford visited the site with the intention of moving the complex to his new museum of Americana, Historic Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. At the time, only the laboratory foundations remained. The Sarah Jordan Boarding House was still intact and Ford’s workers dismantled and moved it along with soil and trash heaps from the laboratory complex. Ford placed the boarding house across from his reconstruction of the Menlo Park laboratory, in time for the celebration in Dearborn of Light’s Golden Jubilee on October 21, 1929., Historical information provided by Dr. Paul Israel, Michael J. Gall, RGA Inc., and Kathleen Carlucci, Edison Tower Commission , Eagle Project of Steven J. Zederbaum , Boy Scout Troop 17 , May 2016