On July 14, 2022, we traveled once again up to Dearborn, Michigan and spent an entire day walking around Henry Ford's Greenfield Village. This was our second trip to the village, and this time we were determined to get some better footage to share with you some of the haunted buildings within the village.
When we were finished and started putting together the video, we decided to expand it and give you a tour of the entire (well what we covered) village and just not the haunted buildings. From time to time throughout this video, our buddy Boris will pop in and shared with you some of the paranormal claims.
You can find out more about admission prices and times on the village's website and, the village is located at 20900 Oakwood Blvd in Dearborn, Michigan.
Greenfield Village is a collection of nearly 100 historic buildings on a 200-acre site in Dearborn, Michigan. It was established in 1933 by industrialist Henry Ford, who relocated or reconstructed buildings there from throughout the United States. The village includes the birthplaces, homes, or workplaces of Ford, William Holmes McGuffey, Noah Webster, Luther Burbank, and Wilbur and Orville Wright. Also featured are Thomas A. Edison’s laboratory from Menlo Park, New Jersey, a Stephen Foster memorial, a courthouse where Abraham Lincoln practiced law, and several locomotives, and representative English and early American homes, public buildings, and craft shops.
Interesting Buildings
The Train
We thought we would start out with a train ride around the outside of the village. This is the same thing we did on our first visit, but you should know, the admission onto the train is not included with the regular price of admission. There is an upgrade that you can get to ride on the train, the cars, and the carousel. We purchased this upgrade, but only used it on this trip to ride the train.
Ford's Childhood Home
One of the main reasons that Henry Ford wanted to build the village was due to this home. This was his childhood home that was stood not too far from Dearborn. We he received a notice that this house had to be either moved back from the road by 300 feet or razed, Henry Ford decided to dismantle the home and bring it to his newly established village.
Ford Motor Company
After two failed attempts Henry Ford succeeded in the automotive business with the Ford Motor Company. This building is modeled after the company's first factory that was located on Mack Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Workers built several early vehicle types here starting in 1903. They soon outgrew this factory and moved to a larger building on Piquette Avenue in Detroit, where the Model T was created. This replica is 1/4 the size of the original building. This building was built at Greenfield Village in 1945.
Wright Brothers Bicycle Shop
Considered to be the birthplace of Aviation, this is the shop where Wilbur and Orville Wright worked out their designs and build the first airplane. As you visit this building and go into the shop area, you will see a demonstration of the Brother's air tunnel that helped them figure out the proper wing designed for their flyer that they took out to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
William Homes McGuffey Schoolhouse
Students would learn to read and write in frontier schoolhouses like this one. This log schoolhouse, named for educator William Homes McGuffey, evokes one-room schools that dotted the frontier in the 1800s. Beginning in 1836, McGuffey created a series of textbooks geared towards students of different ages and abilities. Over the next century, millions of schoolchildren, particularly those living in the frontier and rural areas, used those popular books - including Henry Ford. In addition to doing their lessons, children were expected to do chores as well such as bringing in firewood, washing the blackboards, and clearing the snow away from the school's doorstep.
Cotsworld Collage
In England, cottages like this one were small, modest homes in the country. Years later, people would buy cottages as a way to escape from their faced paced lives in the city. The families who lived in this home had a variety of jobs. From the early 1700s to the mid-1800s, several generations of the Sley/Robins/Smith family worked as farmers and stone masons. Being a stone mason was a good job for the family, because most of the homes in the area were made of stone. This home was originally built in the 1600s and is from Chedworth, England.
Phoenixville Post Office
This building was built around 1825, in Phoenixville, Connecticut. Townspeople stopped by the post offices like this one to pick up and drop off mail, to visit with neighbors, and to catch up on news. During the first decade of the 1900s, sending colorful and inexpensive postcards became all the rage. This building started out as a general store but, for some 35 years, it operated as both a store and the local post office. As the village of Phoenixville declined in population and the general store closed, only the post office operation remained. The last person to run the post office was a woman named Sara Latham, who worked part-time here after her husband Monroe, the pervious postmaster, was elected to the Connecticut state senate.
On our last visit, we were able to go to the post office and send ourselves a post card form the village since the village has their own zip code.
We thought it would be fun to send all of our Patreon supporters a postcard from the village on this last visit and we made sure we had all of the addresses with us. Unfortunately, the post office was closed on this visit.
Haunted Buildings
We decided that instead of making separate videos for each one of the different buildings that are located at the village that have paranormal claims, we have included them in our main videos, but will point out some historical information below. If you want to find out more information about the buildings such as the paranormal claims and pictures, please click on the associated PANICd.com badge located under each one of the following buildings.
Adams Family Home
George Matthew Adams was born in this modest Baptist parsonage in a bustling rural village in 1878. His column "Today's Talk" appeared in newspapers across the country. It was influenced by his religious upbringing, and its inspirational tone appealed to the average American. Someone was heard running into the house and up the stairs, yet nobody was there after investigation.
Daggett Saltbox House
Samuel Daggett (1723-1798) built the saltbox structure sometime between 1746, when 40 acres of land was deeded to him by his father, and 1758, the year he married his wife, Anna Bushnell. Like other farm families living in northeastern Connecticut in the 1760s, the Daggetts made and grew many of the things they needed. Along with farming, Samuel Daggett was also a house builder and furniture maker.
Edison Homestead
When the grandfather of Thomas Edison led his family into Upper Canada in 1811, he settled in Vienna, Ontario, near the shore of Lake Erie. In 1816, their log cabin was replaced by this homestead, the first and for many years the only frame structure in that region. In this home, the father of the great inventor, Samuel, grew to manhood, and married Nancy Elliot, the village school teacher, in the Sunday parlor in 1828. When his arrest was sought because of his participation in the political rebellion of 1837, the house was ransacked by the military. By that time, Samuel Edison had fled to the United States. Young Tom had returned to his ancestral home over many summers and fondly recalled the large, simple, farm-type kitchen. It was moved to Greenfield Village in 1933.
Firestone Farmhouse and Barn
The Firestone Farm was originally built by Peter Firestone in 1828 in Columbiana, Ohio (just a few miles from the Pennsylvania border), and is now a gem among gems inside Greenfield Village. Among the family members living there in the latter half of the 19th century was young Harvey Firestone, the grandson of Peter, who would later gain fame and fortune in the tire industry and became a close friend of Henry Ford.
Giddings Family Home
This former home of New Hampshire's first Secretary of State was originally built by John Giddings in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1751. Giddings was a prosperous merchant and shipbuilder who lived there with his wife, and their five children: On December 22, 1790, it became the home of New Hampshire's first Secretary of State, Joseph Pearson, who, inside this house, married Captain Gidding's daughter, Dorothy, in April of 1795.
Menlo Park Laboratory
Thomas Edison was Henry Ford's life-long hero and, as adults, were very close friends. And when Mr. Ford formed the idea for Greenfield Village he knew he wanted to pay tribute to this greatest of all inventors. What better way to do this than to restore the "factory" where so many of his greatest inventions took place? In March of 1928, Ford began the restoration process. He wanted to reconstruct the Menlo Park complex where Edison and his skilled helpers worked at inventing "the future" from the years 1876 to 1886, and he wanted to do it in every minute detail. The building was almost demolished as it sat in the original location. Henry Ford took painstaking efforts to collect as much of the original boards and structure as possible, even excavating the property to recover artifacts and other original items. Once everything was brought to Dearborn and reconstructed inside the brand new Greenfield Village, Ford had the building complex aligned in the same directional orientation as they were in New Jersey, and even included carloads of New Jersey clay from the original grounds!
We do have another blog post and more videos about this complex of buildings that we also discussed the Lights Jubilee Celebration if you would like to check that out as well.
Noah Webster House
In his New Haven, Connecticut home, Noah Webster wrote the first dictionary of the American English language. The house changed hands, serving as a private residence and dormitory for more than a century before coming to Greenfield Village in 1936.
Sarah Jordan Boarding House
This house, built in 1870, originally stood near the laboratory where Thomas Edison and his men toiled in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Widowed in 1877, "Aunt Sally," as Sarah was known, lived in Newark, and was sent for in 1878 by her distant relative, Thomas Edison, to run a place for his workers to eat and sleep. With little employment opportunities for women, Mrs. Jordan accepted the offer and opened the home as a boarding house that same year.
Susquehanna Plantation
Henry Carroll owned this tidewater Maryland house in the decades before and after the Civil War. Its form was common in this warm, humid climate - one room deep with porches to invite cooling breezes. In 1860, Carroll raised tobacco and wheat as cash crops on his 700-acre plantation.
Wright Family Home
Though the Wright family moved around, brothers Wilbur and Orville always thought of this house, originally located at 7 Hawthorn Street in Dayton, Ohio, as home. Orville was born here in 1871, and Wilbur died here in 1912. It was also here that the brothers began their serious studies in aviation -- work that led to their successful 1903 Wright Flier.
Visiting the Village
As mentioned before, we have visited the village on two different occasions. The first time we visited, we signed up for as many private tours we could find and tried to follow a schedule the village put out that had living history reenactments. This made for an amazing day learning more detailed information about the different buildings at the village.
During this second visit, we went at our own pace and tried to get to as many places as possible not worrying about times and presentations as there were not many taking place anyways.
Either way you visit the village, plan on getting there as early as possible due to parking. Also, plan on doing a lot of walking as the village is quite large in scope.
There are a couple of restaurants at the village as well. We recommend trying to eat at off hours if there are a lot of people visiting the village as this will definitely help with not waiting in long lines who being cramped up inside with a lot of other people while you are trying to relax and eat.
Let us know down in the comments if you have been to the village before, we would love to hear about your adventure. If you like this video and post, you may like to check our post about our visit to the Henry Ford Museum.
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