Death of Henry Ford, Automobile Production Pioneer and Son of Irish Immigrants

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. As founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the Fordism system.

In 1911, he was awarded a patent for the transmission mechanism that would be used in the Model T and other automobiles.

Ford was born in a farmhouse in Michigan’s Springwells Township, leaving home at age 16 to find work in Detroit.

It was a few years before this time that Ford first experienced automobiles, and throughout the later half of the 1880s, Ford began repairing and later constructing engines, and through the 1890s worked with a division of Edison Electric. He officially founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, after prior failures in business but success in constructing automobiles.

Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Springwells Township, Michigan.

His father, William Ford (1826–1905), was born in County Cork, Ireland, to a family that had emigrated from Somerset, England in the 16th century.

His mother, Mary Ford (née Litogot; 1839–1876), was born in Michigan as the youngest child of Belgian immigrants; her parents died when she was a child and she was adopted by neighbors, the O’Herns.