Background
John Baptiste Ford was born in Danville, Kentucky, the son of pioneer parents, Jonathan (?) and Margaret (Baptiste) Ford.
inventor manufacturer river-captain
John Baptiste Ford was born in Danville, Kentucky, the son of pioneer parents, Jonathan (?) and Margaret (Baptiste) Ford.
He learned what he could of reading and writing at home, then became an apprentice to John Jackson, a near-by saddler, but when the latter did not permit him to go to school, he made his way to New Albany, Indiana, and thence to Greenville, where he learned the trade.
Later he bought his master’s shop to which he added a grain, flour, and commission business.
Fie then sold his saddle business and opened a general store in Greenville. Prospering in this he began the manufacture of kitchen cabinets and later feed-cutting boxes for farmers. Just prior to the Civil War he set up a foundry and rolling-mill with railroad and commercial iron as his products.
While so engaged he saw the possibilities of steamboat building. During the Civil War he and his two sons built and sold river-boats, and operated a line of thirty-eight steamboats and flatboats which they captained. The fleet served both the North and South in a purely commercial way during the war, being always in danger of destruction from one or the other. This dangerous venture, however, proved to be financially successful.
At this time he sold his iron business for $150, 000 and embarked on the manufacture of plate glass. By his reading he had become interested in the plate-glass industry of Belgium and England.
Writing to the Scientific American, he raised the question as to the possibility of making plate glass in America. The answer given him on all sides was discouraging. The cost of labor in the United States was said to be too high and raw materials too hard to secure. Despite this dark outlook, Ford obtained numerous glass formulae, engaged the services of expert workmen, and imported European machinery.
Then, with his sons, he worked for ten years in a factory situated in New Albany, just across the river from Louisville, Kentucky. The depression following the Civil War, with the panic of 1873 as its climax, robbed the seventy-year old man of his fortune and he was forced to finance the undertaking with $30, 000 obtained from the sale of an invention of a glass tube to New York interests.
This tube was a rough glass sewer pipe which made the detection of stoppage easier. In addition he realized $20, 000 as commission for the sale of General Fremont’s western holdings.
The industry earned for its owner a second great fortune. Later, when he entered one of the earliest of the great combines, he held with his sons a majority of the stock of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, the Ford company being the largest unit.
In this combination he was associated with John Pitcairn of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company who was the president. But in 1893 the Fords disagreed with Pitcairn on a question of policy and decided to sell their holdings.
Thereafter, Edward Ford established his own glass-factory in Toledo, Ohio.
He made liberal donations to Allegheny College, and at Tarentum he built and furnished a Young Men’s Christian Association building and supplied it with an endowment. As an employer he enjoyed peaceful relations with his men during his whole career, and on the occasion of his eightieth birthday had the unusual honor of seeing a monument of himself erected by the employees of the Ford City plant.
A friend of religion and learning, he built and equipped Methodist churches at Greenville, Ford City, and Wyandotte, as well as a Presbyterian church at the last-named place.
In addition to his activities as a glass-manufacturer, the elder Ford was a man of great vision, and was not afraid of change. In his lifetime he turned his hand to numerous enterprises, and was successful in nearly all of them.
He was an honorary member of the French Academy of Sciences.
As a citizen he earned the highest regard of his associates.
At the age of twenty, he married Mary, the daughter of Benjamin Bower, who had assisted him with his education.