I found some interesting snippets about Henry Ford, of Model-T fame, with roots in Madame, near Ballinascarty Town, Co. Cork. Some of the surnames associated with the Ford family are Jennings, Ahern, Nail, McGinn, Smith, Litogot, Bryant and Clay. Ford's father, William, left the tenanted farm at 21 with many family members, aged and young, during the dreadful famine year of 1847. The Ford family would have had loaded their belongings on to a handcart, along with the younger members of the family, while the older children and their parents walked alongside the rocky paths that passed for roads. It would have taken them two or three days before they traveled the 30 miles to Cork. In those days, some ships loaded and sailed from Cork rather than the harbour at Cobh. The old city of Cork was built on an island created by the River Lee as it divides then joins again to flow into the Atlantic. It was from one of the 20 different quays, each with its own name, that lay around the island, that the Ford's ship sailed. They spent their last night in Ireland in a cottage in Fair Lane, off Fair Hill, possibly with relatives -- John, Daniel and Denis Smith households were found there at Fair Lane. The street has since b! een renamed Wolfe Tone Street, after the Irish leader who tired to overthrow the English in the 1790s. William's mother, Thomasina failed to survive the journey, but we do not know whether she died at sea or soon after arrival. She was almost certainly a victim of ship's fever. For some years, the Fords had ignored the entreaties to leave Ireland from other family members who had gone to America in 1832, built homes and begun farming in Dearborn, near Detroit. Now, having lost his wife on the voyage, John Ford took his children, William, Rebecca, Jane, Henry, Mary, Nancy and Samuel to Michigan and to Dearborn for a reunion with brothers he had not seen for 15 years. William Ford moved around the country and spent some time working on the Michigan Central Railway, extending the line to Lake Michigan, but he eventually returned and found employment on a farm owned by Patrick Ahern Although they had been in America for many years, the Aherns were originally from Cork and they may have well been close neighbors of William's late mother, as a Terence Ahern was listed as owning a house, office and yard at No. 73 Fair Lane. The youngest child in the Ahern family had been adopted and retained the name of Mary Litogot, and some after they met William Ford and Mary were married and moved on to a farm of their own, again at Dearborn. The first of their six children, Henry Ford, was born on July 20, 1863, and he would have three brothers and two sisters all born and raised on the farm. Henry did not take easily to farming, and after falling from a horse at 12, Henry began tinkering with engines, became a machinist's apprentice and an amateur watch repairer. He maintained and repaired steam engines, went to work as an engineer for the Edison Co., supplying electric light for Detroit, and had reached the age of 30 before he became involved with the internal combustion engine. He built his first car, the Quadricycle, in 1896. Although his first involvement with a car company led to bankruptcy, Henry Ford, son of a Famine emigrant, went on to revolutionize American industry and double the wages of ! manual workers. Henry at age 49, returned to Cork in 1912, already a famous inventor and industrialists, to see his homeland. The hearthstone from the fireplace in the old cottage at Madame was installed in the wall of a mansion he was building in Dearborn which was subsequently named Fair Lane. He used the name again for one of the most successful models his company ever produced, the Ford Fairlane. Henry Ford died at age 83 in 1947. -- "The Famine Ships, " Edward Laxton Kingsford Charcoal Briquets go their start in 1921 when Henry Ford wanted to find a use for the growing piles of wood scraps from the production of his Model Ts. A relative, E. G. Kingsford, showed Ford the process of turning wood scraps into charcoal briquettes. Kingsford helped Henry select a site for the charcoal plant, and Henry was so grateful that he caned the name from Ford's Charcoal to Kingsford. The company town, which spran up around the site, was named in Kingsford's honor. -- "Tidbits" Paper, Div. of Steele Media, Billings, MT Henry Ford (1863-1947) developed the mass-produced "Motel T" automobile and sold it at a price the average person could afford. He pioneered in the use of assembly-line methods. Because of the savings in time and money made by mass production, Ford could offer more cars to the American public at a lower price than anyone before him. He sold more than 15 million "Model T's" over the 19-year period from 1908 to 1927. Ford was born on a farm which has since become part of the city of Dearborn, MI. He attended grammar school near his home. Later, he became a machinist in Detroit. His first automobile, completed in 1896, is on exhibition at Dearborn. It is not at all like any present-day automobile. The body looks like a small, crude wooden box. It has a single seat, a steering tiller, bicycle wheels, and an electric bell on the front. Ford made the cylinder of the engine from the exhaust pipe of a steam engine, and made the flywheel out of wood. -- World Book Encyclopedia