Marriages and children

Mina Edison in 1906

On December 25, 1871, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, whom he had met two months earlier as she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children:

• Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965), nicknamed "Dot"^[14]
• Thomas Alva Edison, Jr. (1876–1935), nicknamed "Dash"^[15]
• William Leslie Edison (1878–1937) Inventor, graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, 1900.^[16]

Mary Edison died on August 9, 1884, possibly from a brain tumor.^[17]
On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty nine, Edison married 20-year-old Mina Miller in Akron, Ohio.^[18] She was the daughter of inventor Lewis Miller, co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution and a benefactor of Methodist charities. They also had three children:

• Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who married John Eyre Sloane.^[19][20]
• Charles Edison (1890–1969), who took over the company upon his father's death and who later was elected Governor of New Jersey.^[21] He also took charge of his father's experimental laboratories in West Orange.
• Theodore Edison (1898–1992), (MIT Physics 1923), had over 80 patents to his credit.

Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on August 24, 1947.^[22][23]