Henry's Attic provides fascinating documentation of some of the one million artifacts in the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. The items represent both Henry Ford's passion for collecting Americana and the astonishing array of gifts-some of great historic value and others of a distinctly homegrown variety-that account for almost half of the museum's collections. It was the quantity of these gifts and the unusual and even unique nature of many of them that provided the inspiration for this book. Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, which Ford established in Dearborn, Michigan in the late 1920s, was intended to recreate the slow-paced, rural character of America before the advent of the automobile. The purchases he made and the gifts he was given reflect his desire to document and preserve the lifeways of common people and to emphasize middle-class rural history, as represented by the tools of agriculture, industry, and transportation.

Henry's Attic: Some Fascinating Gifts to Henry Ford and His Museum (Title Not in Series)

Bryan, Ford R.

Arts & Photography

Wayne State University Press

With over 200 photographs chosen from thousands in the collection of Henry Ford Museum &amp; Greenfield Village, Beyond the Model T gives attention to Henry Ford's numerous ventures outside of the auto industry. This revised edition, with 26 additional photographs and two new chapters, completes the portrait of Ford's life, giving depth to a man previously known only for the Model T. Through vivid photographs and narration, Ford's boundless energy and vision are revealed.
An enthusiastic and courageous entrepreneur, Henry Ford used profits from the Model T to launch projects in a multitude of areas, from education to rubber production. Ford R. Bryan presents an unknown Henry Ford, focusing on his experimental humanitarian and business enterprises- including those that failed. New to this edition are chronicles of factory and general hospitals, nursing schools and services, health clinics, and a research institute established by Henry Ford, and the more than a dozen commissaries Ford operated, selling a wide assortment of items to Ford employees and their families from pillow cases to children's shoes. These accounts give testimony to Ford's investment in the well-being of the working class, a category in which he included himself despite his wealth, and disclose his dreams for a country upon which he undeniably left his mark.

Beyond the Model T: The Other Ventures of Henry Ford (Great Lakes Books)

Reference

Clara: Mrs. Henry Ford

"Pick a good model and stay with it," Henry Ford once said. No, he was not talking about cars; he was talking about marriage. Was Clara Bryant Ford a "good model"? Her husband of fifty-nine years seems to have thought so. He called her "The Believer," and indeed Clara's unwavering support of Henry's pursuits and her patient tolerance of the quirks and obsessions that accompanied her husband's genius made it possible for him to change the world. In telling the story of Clara Ford, author Ford Bryan also charts the course of the growing automobile industry and the life of the enigmatic man at its helm. But the book's heart is Clara herself-daughter, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother; cook, gardener, and dancer; modest philanthropist and quiet role model. Clara is newly revealed in accounts and documents gleaned from personal papers, oral histories, and archival material never made public until now. These include receipts and recipes, diaries and genealogies, and 175 photographs.

Clara: Mrs. Henry Ford (Title Not in Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

The 55 chapters of Friends, Families & Forays are bursting with details about the people and the pursuits that colored the life of Henry Ford. Here the reader will meet prominent and diverse figures such as Thomas Edison, John Borroughs, George Washington Carver, Helen Keller, and Mahatma Gandhi-all of whose lives intersected that of Henry Ford at some interesting point in his life. Also brought to life in these pages are the branches of Ford's family tree, from his Irish ancestors to the descendants who carry his legacy today. Although it was the automobile that made him an industrial icon, Henry Ford could boast of exploits in many other arenas as well: railroads, speedboats, robots, flour mills, rubber plantations, and humanitarian efforts around the world and in his own backyard. Ford's hard work and passionate interests brought him great wealth , and this book provides a peek at the luxuries he and his wife, Clara, enjoyed, from a yacht and a private rail car, to gracious residences in Michigan, Florida, and Georgia.

Friends, Families & Forays: Scenes from the Life and Times of Henry Ford (Title Not in Series)

Historical

Henry's Lieutenants (Great Lakes Books)

Although Henry Ford gloried in the limelight of highly publicized achievement, he privately admitted, "I don't do so much, I just go around lighting fires under other people." 
Henry's Lieutenants features biographies of thirty-five "other people" who served Henry Ford in a variety of capacities, and nearly all of whom contributed to his fame. These biographical sketches and career highlights reflect the people of high caliber employed by Henry Ford to accomplish his goals: Harry Bennett, Albert Kahn, Ernest Kanzler, William S. Knudsen, and Charles E. Sorenson, among others. Most were employed by the Ford Motor Company, although a few of them were Ford's personal employees satisfying concurrent needs of a more private nature, including his farming, educational, and sociological ventures. 
Ford Bryan obtained a considerable amount of the material in this book from the oral reminiscences of the subjects themselves.

When Ford Motor Company was formed in 1903, its primary assembly plant was a wooden one-story wagon shop, but as the auto manufacturer grew, so did its factories. By 1917, building on his experience with the Piquette and Highland Park plants, Henry Ford began constructing his ultimate vision of an efficient and effective industrial complex on the banks of the Rouge River. In its time, "The Rouge," as Detroiters called it, was the largest integrated automobile factory in the world, with facilities that included an electric power plant, blast furnaces, foundries, coke ovens, open hearth furnaces, a steel mill, stamping plant, engine plant, glass plant, and miles of conveyors bringing manufactured parts to moving assembly lines. The Rouge was able to provide over 100,000 jobs and effectively gave birth to the city of Dearborn.
Rouge: Pictured in Its Prime, featuring 389 photographs taken within 45 different departments of the Rouge by Ford photographers from 1918 to 1940, provides a realistic portrait of buildings, machinery, and employees at work during a twenty-two year period. The illustrations were selected from a collection of more than 70,000 Rouge photographs located in the Benson Ford Research Center of Henry Ford Museum &amp; Greenfield Village. In the accompanying text, Ford R. Bryan chronicles the history of the Rouge plant, from its earliest conception to its future in the twenty-first century. The Rouge dominated an era of industrial progress and this photo story brings the monumental facility to life in stunning fashion.

Rouge: Pictured in Its Prime (Title Not in Series)

Travel

Covering the period from 1820 to 1950, the time when the first Fords came to America until shortly after the death of Henry Ford, The Fords of Dearborn is a series of illustrated stories about the various branches of the Ford family, together with accounts of some of Henry Ford's unpublicized projects.
Author Ford R. Bryan-who was himself a member of the Ford family of Dearborn-provides authentic and fascinating information about the Fords based almost entirely on information and photographs contained in the Ford Archives of Henry Ford Museum &amp; Greenfield Village. From family bibles, family legend, correspondence, and the historical archives of Dearborn, he traces the family history from England to Ireland, then to America, and in 1832 to the wilderness of the Michigan Territory. The Fords of Dearborn includes genealogical tables and more than 125 illustrations depicting family members, their farms, their homes, and their relationships. This second edition, in a new design in larger format than the previous edition, includes an index that will be appreciated by both readers and genealogists.

The Fords of Dearborn

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