WHITNEY WHETHER. 



773 



merits of his patent. Under tlic urgency of the 

 Southern members, Congress in 1812 declined to renew 

 this patent ; though its inventor had doubled the 

 wealth of the cotton States by developing their chief 

 industry, he was not entitled to a continued reward. 

 His chief lueans were drawn, not from the cotton-gin, 

 but from the manufacture of implements of destruc- 

 tion. Seeing the need of another resource, he had 

 begun to make arms in 1798, and obtained a large 

 contract from Oliver Wolcott, secretary of the treasury. 

 Obliged to do everything from the first steps on, he 

 was unable to furnish 10.000 muskets in 2 years, as 

 he had agreed ; but the time was extended to 10 years 

 and the funds advanced as he needed them. The treat- 

 ment he received from government in this case was in 

 happy contrast to the ingratitude and injustice which 

 repaid his far more useful and important services. 

 By degrees he built up a great arsenal at Whitneyville. 

 Conn., filled large orders for the United States and 

 New York, introduced improvements in firearms and 

 other iron commodities, and realized a fortune. Yet 

 it was the cotton-gin alone which, in Fulton's opinion, 

 placed him with Watt and Arkwripht among the 

 greatest recent benefactors of mankind. He married 

 a descendant of Jonathan Edwards in 1817. and his 

 later years were passed in peace and comfort. He 

 died at New Haven, June 8, IS^'.'i. (p. M. B.) 



WHITNEY, JOSIAH DWIGHT, geologist, was born 

 at Northampton. Mass., Nov. 23, 1819. He gradu- 

 ated at Yale College in 1839. and spent five years in 

 scientific studies in Europe. He lias been engaged on 

 the geological surveys of Ohio, Mississippi, Michigan, 

 and California, beside the U. S. government surveys of 

 the Territories. In 1865 he was made professor of 

 geology in Harvard University. He is a member of 

 the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science and of other scientific bodies. His publica- 

 tions include The .!/</<;///< Wmlth of the United State* 

 (K")l)i and Repfirt* on the Lake Superior region, the 

 upper Mississippi lead region, and the Geological 

 Survey nf California ( 1 81)4-70). He contributed to the 

 ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA that part of the article 

 UNITED STATES which relates to physical geography. 



His brother, WILLIAM DWIGHT WIIITNKV, philolo- 

 gist, was born at Northampton, Mass., Feb. 9, 1827, 

 and graduated at Williams College in 1 845. After three 

 years spent as a bank-clerk, he began the study of 

 Sanskrit at New Haven, 1850, and went abroad the 

 next year to pursue it more fully. For three years he 

 labored at Berlin and Tiibingcn, and planned with 

 Prof. Roth an edition of the Atlmrrn- Vedn-Kan- 

 hitd, which appeared in 1856. For this he made 

 copies and collations of all the MSS. in Europe. In 

 1854 he was appointed to the chair of Sanskrit in 

 Yale College, founded for him by Prof. E. E. Salis- 

 bury (q. v. ) ; to this was added comparative philology in 

 1870._ Besides these he has long held BII instructor- 

 ship in modern languages. He joined the American 

 Oriental Society 1849, was ita librarian 1855-73, and its 

 corresponding secretary from 1857, spending much 

 time in its service, and contributing largely to its 

 Joiiriml, of which he was long the chief editor ; the 

 greater part of vols. v.-ix. is irom his pen. His edi- 

 tion of the translation by E. Burgess and others of 

 the Suryn-Siddhfinta, or text-book of Hindu as- 

 tronomy, appeared at New Haven I860. Two y,;ars 

 later he ublished the Athana- P 



, 



text, translation, and notes, and in 1871 another Hin- 

 du grammatical book, Tm'ttirriya-Pr&ti'f&khj/a, which 

 received a prize from the Royal Academy of Berlin. 

 His lectures on Language inul the. Study nf Lan- 

 <j""'/f, delivered at the Smithsonian Institution 1864, 

 and later at the Lowell Institute in Boston, appeared in 

 1 *>'>', and a German translation by Dr. J. Jo!ly ; 1874. 

 Hi-, labors have not been confined to Sanskrit: his 

 Oermnn Grammar (1869) and German Reader (\&1$) 

 have been much praised and used, and he has pre- 

 pared similar works in French and English. His 



! Oriental and Linguistic Studies appeared 1872, and a 

 I second series 1 874. His Life and Growth of Languages 

 (1875) formed part of the "International Scientific 

 Series," and was translated into French and German 

 1876. His Sanskrit Grammar was published iit 

 Leipsic, 1.879. He aided in the preparation of the 

 Sanskrit Lexicon at St. Petersburg (1872-5), and has 

 i written for several German publications, and at homo 

 for Appleton's CydoptuJin, the Bibliotheca Sacra, the 

 New Englander. etc. He was the first president of 

 the American Philological Association. He is chief 

 editor of the Centnry Dictionary of the English Lan- 

 guage (1889). He has a European no less than a 

 national fame, and is considered by many the foremost 

 expositor of the science of language. 



WHETHER, JOHN GMBNLXAF, one of the most 

 popular and representative of American poets, was 

 born at Haverhill, Mass., Dec. 17, 18(17, in the farm- 

 house built by his ancestor, Thomas Whitticr (1620- 

 96), who came from Southampton, England, to Boston 

 in 1638, and settled at Salisbury on the Merrimac and 

 JO years later at Haverhill. The family, for a genera- 

 tion or more before the poet's time, were Quakers, 

 and to that connection he has adhered. On his 

 mother's side he had in Stephen Bachilor, first minister 

 of Hampton, N. H., a common ancestor with Daniel 

 Webster. His early life on. the farm, and the various 

 members of the family, are described in his poem 

 Snow- Bound, and other of his writings record his 

 childish experiences. He was fond of reading, and 

 began to rhyme at fourteen, stimulated by the loan of 

 a volume of Burns. His first printed verses appeared 

 in a local paper in 1826, and W. L. Garrison, then 

 editing the Newburyport Free Press, called at the 

 farm-house,_ encouraged and praised the young poet, 

 and urged him to seek further educational advantages 

 than the district school had afforded. By making 

 shoes during the winter he earned enough to cover his 

 expenses for six months at the Haverhill Academy, 

 which he entered in April. 1827. In the winter fol- 

 lowing he taught school at West Amesbury, now Mer- 

 rimac. He began to write verses for the Haverhill 

 Gazette 1828, and continued these contributions for 

 nearly forty years. In the fall of 1828 Garrison, then 

 in Boston, found him a place as writer on the Ameri- 

 can Manufacturer. This sheet he practically edited 

 for some months, receiving $9 a week, and meanwhile 

 he wrote some verse for John Neal's Yankee. From 

 June, 1829, to July, 1830, he was at home, working 

 on the farm, the latter months editing the Gazette, 

 and writing for the Hartford New England Weekly 

 Review. He assumed the editorial chair of this paper 

 jn July, 1830, succeeding G. D. Prentice, and retained 

 it eighteen months ; during that time, besides many 

 prose sketches and tales from his pen, it contained 42 . 

 poems of his, among them The Vaudoix Teacher, 

 which in a French version was greatly valued in the 

 lower Alps, long before its authorship was known. 

 His first volume, New England Legends in Prose (Hul 

 Verne, appeared at Hartford in February, 1831. Most 

 of these early efforts were lightly regarded and sup- 

 pressed by their author in after years, but they gave 

 him a certain repute at the time. Before leaving 

 Hartford he edited Brainard's Poems, and prefixed a 

 sketch of that writer's life ; the book was published 

 early in 1832. That year Mr. Whittier was at home 

 writing for Buckingham's New England Magazine, in 

 which appeared Mogg Mrgone (in a volume, 1836). 

 Moll Pitdier was published at Boston 1832. Garrison's 

 Liberator, begun 1831, much influenced Whittier, who 

 printed at his own expense a well-reasoned pamphlet 

 of 23 pages, Justice and Expediency, or Slavery Con- 

 sidered with a View to its Rightful and Effectual Rem- 

 edy, Abolition (Haverhill, 1833) Of this Arthur 

 Tappan (Q. v.), of New York, soon had 10,000 copies 

 struck off for gratuitous distribution^ This was the 

 beginning of the poet's long and active share in the 

 anti-slavery agitation. He handled the sauie topic in 



