Henry Ford attended the Scotch Settlement School in the Greenfield Township where he was born, near Detroit, Michigan. Henry Ford was born on a farm in 1863 in the township, which has now been renamed and redeveloped as the town of Dearborn, Michigan. In 1829, the township held a meeting to divide the township up into different school districts. Each school district was run by 50 families and their children would attend the schools in the assigned district. The Ford family were members of School District One in the township, of which the Scotch Settlement School was the assigned school for children’s education. The school itself was built in 1861 and Henry Ford is registered as attending the school in 1877, when he would have been around 14 years of age. School records state that Ford, along with his friend Edsel Ruddiman, was quite a troublemaker and one teacher, John Chapman, was paid an extra $5 a month to keep Ford and Ruddiman in line. The school was a one-room building, most likely made of brick, in a largely rural, country area and the school would most probably have been of Catholic teaching. It is widely documented that Henry Ford left school aged 15 and worked in the nearby city of Detroit as a machinist before moving into his automotive career. Henry Ford established Greenfield Village in the town of Dearborn, a large area of land where Ford would transport famous historical buildings from their original locations. Amongst the buildings in Greenfield Village are the house where Ford was born, the prototype garage where Ford created the ‘Ford Quadricycle’, and the school itself. The school can still be seen in Greenfield Village today, now run by The Henry Ford museum.
