How a train rescue in Mount Clemens launched Thomas Edison

One of the turns that set Thomas Edison on the path to becoming America’s most famous inventor happened at a little train depot in Mount Clemens. In 1862, Edison was a 15-year-old who sold candy and newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railroad. One day at the Mount Clemens station, he saw the stationmaster’s toddler son playing on the tracks in the path of a rolling freight car — and he dashed out and pulled the boy to safety. The grateful father, station agent James Mackenzie, had no money to reward him, so he offered something better: he taught young Edison telegraphy. That skill became Edison’s first real trade, and some of his earliest inventions grew out of it. (The two stayed close — Mackenzie later came to work at Edison’s famous Menlo Park laboratory.) The 1859 depot where it happened is still standing and now houses the Michigan Transit Museum, with railroad exhibits and seasonal train rides.

The Michigan Transit Museum is in the historic Grand Trunk depot at 198 Grand Street, Mount Clemens (michigantransitmuseum.com).