Collection of 35 Original Photographs Documenting the Adventures of the “Vagabonds”: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John Burroughs, and Harvey Firestone, c. 1918-22
Very good. Thirty-five original sepia prints, 5 x 7 inches., showing scenes from some of the many camping trips of the group of prominent men who called themselves the Vagabonds—Ford, Edison, Burroughs, and Firestone. Two matted, the rest loose. Minor rippling, else very good. The idea for the Vagabonds summer camping trips originated in 1914, when Ford and Burroughs visited Edison in Florida. “In 1916, Edison invited Ford, Burroughs and Harvey Firestone to journey through the New England Adirondacks and Green Mountains. In 1918, Ford, Edison, Firestone, his son Harvey, Burroughs, and Robert DeLoach of the Armour Company caravanned through the mountains of West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. Subsequent trips were made in 1919 to the Adirondacks and New England; in 1920 to John Burroughs' home and cabin retreat into the Catskill Mountains; in 1921 to West Virginia and northern Michigan; and in 1923 to northern Michigan….The trips were well organized and equipped. There were several heavy passenger cars and vans to carry the travelers, household staff, and equipment; Ford Motor Company photographers also accompanied the group. The 1919 trip involved fifty vehicles, including two designed by Ford: a kitchen camping car with a gasoline stove and built-in icebox presided over by a cook and a heavy touring car mounted on a truck chassis with compartments for tents, cots, chairs, electric lights, etc. On later trips, there was a huge, folding round table equipped with a lazy susan that seated twenty” (Henry Ford Museum). The group offered here includes some well-known and often reprinted images (e.g., Ford repairing one of his boots, Burroughs picking berries, the men traveling the countryside on horseback), but also several less common, possibly unpublished images, including one of Ford washing handkerchiefs in a creek, several showing the women of the party, and one of Ford’s personal photographer George Ebling, who likely took many of the photos in the group. President Warren G. Harding joined some of these excursions, and he appears in at least four of these images.
Item #18152
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