\"New Jersey Governor\" Charles Edison Hand Signed TLS Dated 1944 COA For Sale

Born at his parents\' home, Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey, he graduated from the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut in 1909.In 1915–1916 he operated the 100-seat \"Little Thimble Theater\" with Guido Bruno. There they played the works of George Bernard Shaw and August Strindberg while Charles contributed verse to \"Bruno\'s Weekly\" under the pseudonym \"Tom Sleeper\". Late in 1915, he brought his players to Ellis Island to perform for Chief Clerk Augustus Sherman and more than four hundred detained immigrants. These avant-garde activities came to a halt when his father put him to work. He married Carolyn Hawkins on March 27, 1918. They had no children. For a number of years Charles Edison ran Edison Records. Charles became president of his father\'s company Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in 1927, and ran it until it was sold in 1957, when it merged with the McGraw Electric Company to form the McGraw-Edison Electric Company. Edison was board chairman of the merged company until he retired in 1961.On January 18, 1937, President Roosevelt appointed Charles Edison as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, then as Secretary on January 2, 1940, Claude A. Swanson having died several months previously. Edison himself only kept the job until June 24, resigning to run his gubernatorial campaign. During his time in the Navy department, he advocated construction of the large Iowa-class battleships, and that one of them be built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, which secured votes for Roosevelt in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the 1940 presidential election; in return, Roosevelt had BB-62 named the USSNew Jersey.In 1940, he won election as Governor of New Jersey, running in reaction to the political machine run by Frank Hague, but broke with family tradition by declaring himself a Democrat. As governor, he proposed updating the New Jersey State Constitution. Although it failed in a referendum and nothing was changed during his tenure, state legislators did reform the constitution later.In 1948, he established a charitable foundation, originally called \"The Brook Foundation\", now the Charles Edison Fund.