CHARLES OTIS WHITMAN 
FRANK R. LILLIE 
Charles Otis Whitman was born December 14, 1842, in Wood- 
stock, Maine. He died at his home in Chicago, December 6, 1910. 
On his father’s side! he was descended from Jacob Whitman, who 
was a resident of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, whence he emi- 
grated to Buckfield, Maine. Three sons of Jacob Whitman 
settled in Woodstock, Maine, about the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century, among them Joseph (born September 30, 1783), 
the grandfather of the subject of our sketch. Whitman’s 
father (born February 19, 1821) was the eighth of ten children; 
his mother (born December 12, 1823) was Marcia Leonard, 
daughter of Solomon Leonard, also of Woodstock. Whitman 
married Emily Nunn of Peru, Ohio, in August, 1884, and had 
two sons, Francis, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Carroll, 
born in Worcester, Massachusetts. 
His early life was spent in Woodstock, though his father re- 
moved to Waterford for a while, subsequently returning to Wood- 
stock. He attended the town schools in Woodstock and Water- 
ford ‘‘and fitted for college at Norway and other academies, 
teaching winters to obtain the means for paying his school ex- 
penses.” ‘‘He early developed a taste for natural history, and 
while here (Woodstock) and a boy, he procured and mounted a 
very fine collection of the birds of Maine. So artistically pre- 
1 In the preparation of this brief biography I have been indebted for information 
to Mrs. Whitman, Dr. Wallace Craig, Prof. H. H. Donaldson, Prof. E. 8. Morse, 
Prof. Cornelia M. Clapp, George T. Little, the librarian of Bowdoin College, Mrs. 
Cornelia Fletcher Day (Westford, Mass.), Mrs. Sarah H. Trumbull (Beverly, 
Mass.), Mrs. Helen Keith Frost (Westford, Mass.), Secretary of the Boston School 
Committee, Headmaster English High School, Boston, Mass., Prof. E. L. Mark, 
Edward Phelps Allis, Jr., Dr. Reinhardt Dohrn, and others. I must also express 
my indebtedness to E. G. Conklin and T. H. Morgan, for criticism of the manu- 
script. The section dealing with Whitman’s scientific work was prepared by 
T. H. Morgan, E. G. Conk in, J. Perey Moore and others—See foot-note p. xlvil. 
XV 
