My Genealogy Hound

EDWIN G. FORD, one of the old and popular railroad officials of Sedalia, is now general foreman of the Missouri Pacific and Missouri, Kansas & Texas round-house. He is a native of Staffordshire, England, and his birth occurred January 11, 1852. From his first year, however, he has been a resident of the United States, and from boyhood has been employed about railroad-shops. He has worked his way upward by strict attention to duty and earnest endeavor to please his superiors, and now enjoys the distinction of being regarded as one of their most trusted employes.

The parents of our subject, Edwin D. and Ellen (Scofield) Ford, were likewise natives of England. The former was a hardware merchant, and followed the same business after crossing the Atlantic. For four or five years he was proprietor of a store in New Haven, Conn., afterwards for two years managed the Racine Boiler and Machine, shop, and then removed to Chicago, Ill. Subsequently, going to Aurora, he entered the boiler department of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy shops, that state, and has since been foreman there and in Eldorado, Kan. His wife was the daughter of John Scofield, who died in America.

E. G. Ford is next to the eldest in a family of seven children, who are still living. Until he was fourteen years of age he attended the public schools, and was then apprenticed to the machinist’s trade in Bloomington, Ill. There he attended night school for about four years, and later became a machinist, going to Chicago, where he remained until after the fire. In 1872 he went to St. Louis, where he found employment in the Missouri Pacific shops, and in the spring of 1873 went to Texas, and for eight months worked for the International & Great Northern Railroad at Hearne. At the end of eight months he returned to the Alton shops in Bloomington, and the same fall witnessed his arrival in Sedalia. Since then he has been in the employ of the firm for which he is still working, but did not rise to his present position until 1882. When the railroads were consolidated, he was made general round-house foreman, with about thirty men under his direction and with two round-houses, having in all twenty-eight stalls.

Mr. Ford was married in Sedalia, in 1881, to Mrs. Mary V. McDonald, nee Turner, who was born in Howard County, Mo., and was educated in Boonville. Mr. and Mrs. Ford have one child, a son, Edward G. The parents are members of Calvary Episcopal Church. Mr. Ford is a Mason of the Royal Arch degree, and politically is a true-blue Republican.