Bro Henry Ford, born on the 30th July 1863, Bro Ford was an inventor and businessman As founder of the Ford Motor Company, he is credited as a pioneer in making automobiles affordable for middle-class Americans through the Fordism system. Bro Ford was born in a farmhouse in Michigan’s Springwell’s Township, leaving home at age 16 to find work in Detroit. It was a few years before this time that Bro Ford first experienced automobiles, and throughout the latter half of the 1880s, he began repairing and later constructing engines, and through the 1890s worked with a division of Edison Electric. He officially founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903. Ford was initiated into Palestine Lodge No. 357 and was raised to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason in 1894. He kept up a Masonic career throughout his lifetime, no easy feat when his many accomplishments and innovations are considered. He eventually received the 33rd and last degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in 1940 – the capstone of many decades of Masonic service. Bro Ford died on the 7th April 1947, of a cerebral haemorrhage at Fair Lane, his estate in Dearborn, at the age of 83. A public viewing was held at Greenfield Village where up to 5,000 people per hour filed past the casket. Funeral services were held in Detroit’s Cathedral Church of St. Paul and he was buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.
