Edwin Ede was born in Dobwalls and baptised in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, Barn Street, Liskeard, on June 25, 1851.

His parents, Jane and John (a master mason) continued to live in Dobwalls, but Edwin grew up on Trevelmond Farm with his aunt Betsy and uncle William (also a master mason) with whom Edwin served an apprenticeship.

In 1871, at the age of 20, Edwin embarked on the ‘Algeria’ at Liverpool heading for New York via Queenstown in Ireland. He travelled in Steerage and gave his occupation as a ‘mechanic’, it was a popular ruse among young men at the time to give an occupation which attracted a lower, or even free, passage.

In that same year of 1871, Mr Benjamin Franklin Goodrich opened a rubber hose company, using crude rubber imported from Brazil, in the township of Akron, Summit County, Ohio. Akron became one of the fastest growing cities in America and became known as the ‘Rubber Capital of the World’, producing 50 per cent of the world’s rubber products in the 1910s. Their main products became bicycle and motor car tyres. It was Henry Ford who chose B F Goodrich tyres for his Model T Ford in 1903. In 1990 the company was bought out by Michelin.

Akron is where Edwin found employment, as a bricklayer, and on October 5, 1875, he married Clarissa Moore. They had three daughters and a son before Edwin died aged only 40; his obituary appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal on April 11, 1929, which I’ve not been able to access. If any reader is able to access the obituary, which may throw some light on Edwin’s premature death please email [email protected]

By Brian Oldham, museum volunteer and Bard of the Gorsedh Kernow