Here he brought the schoolhouses, the dwellings, the workshops, and the stores of other days so that the pupils in the schools of the Institute could study not only from books but from things. This part of the Institute he called Greenfield Village. He gathered thousands of objects to put into The Henry Ford Museum so that they could be studied by all who wanted to learn about the past. “I am collecting the history of our people as written into things their hands made and used,” he said; “... a piece of machinery or anything that is made is like a book, if you can read it. It is part of man’s spirit.” He thus provided a school not only for children but also for workers. Henry Ford once called the museum and Village that he had created “a people’s university.” Here at The Edison Institute the creator of mass production methods—now intensely interested in the hand work of village craftsmen—spent many hours. He continued to be keenly interested in the future of the automobile industry while he collected relics of the past. His unusual appreciation of both the past and the future is illustrated by the description of Henry Ford as the one man who could spend his time collecting old churns while he followed the experiments of his chemists concerning synthetic milk. From his home in Dearborn, he kept a watchful eye over the Rouge plant, now headed by his grandson, and over The Edison Institute. It was after a visit to Greenfield Village on the afternoon of April 7, 1947, that Henry Ford became ill. He died during the evening at the age of eighty-three. This man, who had been born into a world of horse-drawn carriages, had left a world of powered wheels. While the entire Edison Institute stands as a memorial to Henry Ford’s interest in the past, certain exhibits have a particularly close relationship to his life and work. At the Henry Ford Museum, visitors can see a special exhibition entitled “Henry Ford: a Personal History.” This display depicts the important stages in Henry Ford’s busy career. In Greenfield Village, buildings which were closely associated with his life include: The Birthplace of Henry Ford. The Bagley Avenue workshop, where Henry Ford built his first automobile. The Magill Jewelry Store, where, as a youth, he repaired watches and clocks. The Scotch Settlement School and the Miller School, where Henry Ford received his formal education. Transcriber’s Notes —Silently corrected a few typos. —Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication. —In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Henry Ford: Highlights of His Life, by Edison Institute