Glenmont - Thomas Edison's Home | West Orange, New Jersey

Glenmont Was The Home of Thomas and Mina Miller Edison

Thomas Edison resided in his magnificent home in the exclusive Llewellyn Park section of West Orange, New Jersey for many years.

He originally moved to Glenmont in 1886 with his second wife Mina Miller Edison:

Mina Miller was born on July 6, 1865, the seventh of eleven children. She met Thomas Edison at the home of a mutual friend of her father and Edison, the inventor Ezra Gilliland. Her future husband claims he taught her Morse code so that they could converse in secret, even while the family watched. This is how Edison claims he proposed marriage and how she responded “yes.” The two married on February 24, 1886.

We went on a day that was sometimes cloudy and sometimes brightly sunny.

Entering The Mansion

You wait for your guide to let you in. All visitors must be on the guided tour.

You first must stop at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park labs to pay any admission fees and get the pass for the Glenmont tour, because Llewellyn Park ( where the mansion is located), is a gated community.

Sign by the front door:

Home of Thomas Alva Edison from 1886 to his death on October 18, 1931. Here three children were born to him and his wife, Mna. This library over the entranceway was his “thought laboratory” for many idea which later took shape at the Edison Laboratory in the valley below.

The mansion was built in Queen Anne architectural style, while the interior was built in the Eastlake style.

The mansion is fascinating in so many ways, including the architecture. It has plenty of “nooks and crannies” that are fun to look at.

Llewellyn Park is a gated community where many famous and wealthy people have lived. It was one of the first planned suburbs in the United States.

Other residents over the years included abolitionist James Miller McKim, whose charming house contained secret chambers to hide escaped slaves traversing the Underground Railroad, the Merck family (George W. Merck was raised there), and the Colgate family.

Visitors are not allowed to photograph the interiors, so you can check out this Glenmont Mansion Tour with some old black-and-white photographs from the inside.

You can also watch this delightful video produced by the Park, which will show you the interiors, the way of life for the Edisons, and many areas that I did not photograph.

Watch it all the way to the end!

Thomas Edison And His Family

Altogether Edison had six children.

Edison moved here with Mina and his three children from his first marriage (his first wife Mary Stillwell Edison died in 1884).

Thomas and Mina had three children together, including Charles Edison, who served as both the Governor of New Jersey and the Secretary of the Navy. He also lived in Llewellyn Park.

The son most like him was Theodore:

The one who followed most closely in Edison’s footsteps was his youngest son Theodore. He graduated from MIT in 1923 with a degree in physics. He worked as a laboratory assistant for Thomas A. Edison, Inc., and worked his way up to director of research and engineering. Later, he founded a company called Calibron Industries near the West Orange plant and began inventing on his own. He held 80 U.S patents by the time he died in 1992.