Biography of Thomas Edison Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. When he was young his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan where he attended school for three months - the only formal schooling he ever had. At school most of his teachers often thought him dumb because of all the questions he asked to their answers, as well as him having a very large head. His mother understood that he asked these questions to find out exactly how things worked, and encouraged him to do so. By the time he was 13 he had begun his own newspaper named the Herald. His paper published local, national, and international events, and was sold on trains of the Grand Truck railroad