en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_richest_Americans_in_history
1 correction found
Mr. Edsel Ford, Detroit, Michigan; inherited wealth: Ford Motor Company.
This entry misidentifies the Ford heir on the 1957 list. Edsel Ford died in 1943; contemporary reprints of Fortune’s 1957 list name **Mrs. Edsel Ford** instead.
Full reasoning
This line is incorrect because Edsel Ford was already dead by 1957, so he could not have appeared as “Mr. Edsel Ford” on Fortune’s 1957 list of the wealthiest Americans.
Two pieces of evidence show what the entry should be:
- Ford’s corporate biography of Edsel Ford states that he died in May 1943.
- A 1957 newspaper reprint of Fortune’s wealthiest-Americans list places “Mrs. Edsel Ford of Detroit” in the $100 million to $200 million category, not “Mr. Edsel Ford.”
A contemporaneous TIME article from 1947 also refers to the controlling Ford shareholder after Edsel’s death as “Mrs. Edsel Ford” and explains that she and her children held the family’s Ford Motor Company voting stock.
So this Wikipedia entry appears to have changed the widow’s title/name incorrectly: the 1957 list was referring to Eleanor Clay Ford, Mrs. Edsel Ford, not to Edsel Ford himself.
3 sources
- Edsel Ford Biography
Edsel Ford died of stomach cancer at the age of 49, in May of 1943, at Gaukler Point, with his wife Eleanor by his side.
- The Bulletin (Bend, Oregon), Oct. 29, 1957, page 8
... Mrs. Jean Rockefeller Mauze of New York are in the 100 to 200 million dollar category, as is Mrs. Edsel Ford of Detroit.
- AUTOS: No Model Change | TIME
The Ford stock he held ... were left to his four grandchildren, Henry, Benson, Josephine and William, and their mother, Mrs. Edsel Ford.