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I thought this was also interesting; it was an article written in the
DECATUR COUNTY JOURNAL; October 2l, l886. Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert
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MRS. MARY STILLWELL EDISON,
wife of the inventor, THOMAS ALVA EDISON,
died recently at her late residence at Menlo Park, N.J. She was 29
years of age and leaves surviving her three children.

The story of her marriage to Mr. EDISON is a singularly strange and
romantic one. When he first formed her acquaintance, he was about
twenty-five years of age. He had just invented the chemical telegraph,
by means of which could be transmitted, he claimed, on a single wire,
3,000 words a minute. The telegraph, notwithstanding this, however,
became subservient to the Morse System.

While working on the chemical telegraph, he employed several young women
to punch holes in the paper. Among them was Miss MARY STILLWELL. One
day he was standing behind her chair examining a telegraphic instrument.
"Mr. EDISON, remarked Miss STILLWELL, suddenly turning around, "I can
always tell when you are behind me or near me." "How do you account for
that?" mechanically asked Mr. EDISON, still absorbed in his work. "I
don't know, I am sure", she quietly answered; "but I seem to feel when
you are near. "Miss STILLWELL," said Mr. EDISON, turning round now in
his turn and looking his interlocutor in the face, "I've been thinking
considerable of you of late, and if you are willing to have me, I'd like
to marry you." "You astonish me," exclaimed Miss STILLWELL. "I--I
never---" "I know you never thought I would be your wooer," interrupted
Mr. EDISON; "but think over my proposal, Miss STILLWELL, and talk it
over with your mother."

Then he added, in the same off-hand, business-like way, as though he
might be experimenting upon a new mode of courtship: "Let me know as
early as possible, as, if you consent to marry me, and your mother is
willing, we can be married by next Tuesday."

This was the extent of Mr. EDISON'S courtship. It is hardly necessary
to add that the highly-favored lady laid the abrupt proposal before her
mother. "Ma has consented," she told Mr. EDISON the next day. "That's
all right," said Mr. EDISON in reply. "We will be married a week from
today." And so it was. The two were married in a week and a day from
the beginning of Mr. EDISON'S novel and precipitate courtship.

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