William Leslie Edison

From the 1880 federal census, William L. Edison lived in East New Brunswick, Middlesex County, New Jersey, with his parents and siblings. The family at the time consisted of:

• Head Thomas A. Edison 32
• Wife Mary Edison 24
• Daughter Marion E. Edison 7
• Son Thomas E. Edison 5
• Son William L. Edison 1

From the 1910 federal census, William L. Edison lived in West Orange, Essex County, New Jersey, with his wife and two sisters-in-law. The family at the time consisted of:

• Head William L Edison 32
• Sister in Law Fannie Travers 30
• Wife Blanche T Edison 28
• Sister in Law Alivia Travers 21

From the 1920 federal census, William L. Edison lived in Morris, Morris County, New Jersey, with his wife. The family at the time consisted of:

• Head William L Edison 44
• Wife Blanche T Edison 37

William Leslie Edison was born on October 3, 1878. Like his older brother (Thomas Alva Edison Jr), William boarded at St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, and the J.M. Hawkins School on Staten Island. He later studied at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. He married Blanche Travers. He served in the military during the Spanish-American War in 1898 and again in the First World War (though he wrote his father in 1918 in a failed attempt to get a discharge).

William served as a sergeant in the U. S. Army Tank Corps in England and France during World War I.

Relations between William and his father were strained. Edison Sr. once responded to a request for money from Blanche Edison by writing, "I see no reason whatever why I should support my son. He has done me no honor and has brought the blush of shame to my cheeks many times." Like his brother he turned to farm life, breeding chickens. He died on August 10, 1937