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OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. (WEST WHITNEY.) 



the Smithsonian Institution. He was a member of 

 the Philosophical and the Anthropological Societies 

 of Washington, president of the former in 1884, and 

 President of the Copyright League of the District of 

 Columbia. For some time before his death he was 

 engaged in preparing for publication his lectures on 

 literature at Princeton, his lectures on history at Co- 

 lumbian University, and a history of the civil war in 

 its civil, political, and j udicial aspects. He received the 

 degree of LL. D. from Columbian University in 1868. 



West, Absalom M.. military officer, born in Alabama, 

 in 1818; died in Holly Springs, Miss., Sept. 30, 1894. 

 He received a public-school education; was a mem- 

 ber of the Mississippi Senate for 3 terms ; was com- 

 missioned a brigadier general in the Confederate 

 army, and acting commissary general, quartermaster 

 general, and paymaster general subsequently; was 

 elected to Congress after the war, but was refused a 

 and was the first president of the Mississippi 

 Central Railroad Company. In 1884 was the Green- 

 hack candidate for Vice-President. 



WMteman, Margaret (known in religion as SISTER 

 M. KOSINA), educator, born in Charleston, S. C., Feb. 

 11, 1825; died in New York city, March 16, 1894. 

 She renounced the world and entered the Mount St. 

 Vincent Convent, then in Central Park, New York 

 city, in 1849; was mistress of novices and secretary 

 there for many years ; and from 1892 was mother su- 

 perior of the* Roman Catholic order of Sisters of 

 Charity of the United States. Since the removal of 

 the convent to the Forrest Castle site and the erec- 

 tion of the present large building the institution has 

 been one of the most noted Roman Catholic educa- 

 tional establishments in the country, and Sister 

 Rosina was a most zealous worker in the cause. 



Whiting, William Danforth, naval officer, born in 

 Boston, Mass., May 27, 1823; died in New York city, 

 March 19, 1894. He was appointed a midshipman in 

 the United States navy on March 1, 1841 ; was pro- 

 moted passed midshipman, Aug. 10, 1847 ; master, 

 May 1, 1855; lieutenant, Sept. 14 following; lieuten- 

 ant commander, July 16, 1862; commander, July 25, 

 1866; and captain, Aug. 19, 1872; and was retired by 

 special act of Congress with the rank of commodore, 

 because of total blindness resulting from exposures in 

 the service, Oct. 12, 1881. During his naval career 

 he was on sea service twenty years and two months, 

 on shore on other duty eighteen years, and was un- 

 employed fourteen years and ten months. -He was a 

 son of Gen. Henry Whiting, who served in the In- 

 "dian wars and in the War of 1812. He was present on 

 the "Levant" at the capture of Monterey, Cal., July 

 7,1846; attended the naval school in 1847-'48 ; was 

 on duty at the Naval Observatory, Washington, D. C., 

 in 1853, and on coast survey duty in 1854-'57 ; and 

 served on the frigate "Niagara" at the laying of the 

 Atlantic cable in 1857. In the civil war he was ex- 

 ecutive officer of the " Vandalia " at the capture of 

 Port Royal in 1861, and commanded the " Wyan- 

 dotte" in the South Atlantic squadron and in the 

 Potomac flotilla in 1862 ; the " Ottawa " in the attack 

 on and capture of the lower end of Morris island, and 

 in the bombardment of Fort Wagner and Battery 

 Gregg in 1863 ; and the " Savannah" in the Eastern 

 Gulf Blockading squadron in 1864. In 1870 he com- 

 manded the double-turret ironclad " Miantonomoh." 

 While captain of the flagship " Worcester," of the 

 North Atlantic squadron (1872-'75), he took out 

 American contributions of food and clothing for the 

 French sufferers by the Franco-Prussian War, which 

 were sold to advantage in Liverpool and London, 

 and the money forwarded to the relief committee. 

 His last service was as chief of the Bureau of Naviga- 

 tion from ls7s till his retirement. 



Whitney, William Dwight, philologist, born in North- 

 ampton, Mass., Feb. 9, 1827; died in New Haven, 

 Conn., June 7, 1894. He was the second son of Jo- 

 siah D. Whitney and of Sarah Williston, a sister 

 of Samuel Williston, whose princely benefactions 

 (amounting to over $1 ,500,000 ) to Amherst College, Wil- 

 liston Seminary, and other New England institutions 



of learning are not forgotten. Young Whitney was 

 prepared for college in the high school of his native 

 town, and entered Williams in the sophomore year, 

 graduating there in 1845. He then entered the 

 Northampton Bank, of which his father was cashier, 

 and remained there for three years. Meanwhile he 

 devoted his lei- 

 sure to the study 

 of natural his- 

 tory. It was at 

 this time that he 

 made his collec- 

 tion of the birds 

 of New England, 

 which he him- 

 self mounted, and 

 which are now in 

 the Peabody Mu- 

 seum in New 

 Haven. In 1848 

 he went to Wis- 

 consin and was 

 engaged on the 

 geological sur- 

 vey, but his fond- 

 ness for linguis- 

 tics was greater 

 than that for nat- 

 ural history, and 

 in 1849 he went 

 to New Haven, 

 where he studied * 



philology, and especially Sanskrit, under the vener- 

 able Edward E. Salisbury, who still lives, and where 

 he was associated with James Hadley. He went to 

 Germany in 1850, and studied during the winters at 

 the University of Berlin under Franz Bopp and Al- 

 brecht Weber, and during the summers at the Uni- 

 versity of Tubingen under Rudolph Roth. With the 

 latter he prepared an edition of the " Atharva Veda 

 Sanhita " (Berlin, 1856), for which he copied the text 

 from the manuscripts in tr/e Royal Library in Berlin, 

 and collated it with other copies in the libraries of 

 Paris, London, and Oxford, which places he visited 

 before his return to the United States. He was ap- 

 pointed to the cl'-air of Sanskrit in Yale College in 

 1854, and in 1870 the title of his professorship became 

 that of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, which 

 place he held until his death. He organized the_ de- 

 partment of modern languages in the Sheffield Scien- 

 tific School when that institution was remodeled in 

 1862. and for many years thereafter continued in 

 charge of the department. Also for a time he had 

 classes in modern languages in the college proper. 

 The national recognition of his high attainments 

 came largely in consequence of a series of 6 lectures 

 that he delivered before the Smithsonian Institution 

 in Washington in 1864. These he repeated later in 

 extended form before the Lowell Institute in Boston, 

 and then published them as " Language and the 

 Study of Language " (New York, 1867). This work 

 also 'appeared in London, and was translated into 

 Dutch and German. In 1849 he was elected to the 

 American Oriental Society, served as its librarian in 

 1855-'73, and as its corresponding secretary in 1857- 

 '84, becoming, subsequent to 1884, its president. His 

 contributions to its journal were very great, and of 

 its Vols. VI-XII half the contents were written by 

 him, including a translation of the " Surya Sid- 

 dhanta," with notes and appendix, being a Hindu 

 treatise on astronomy (1860) ; text, with notes, of 

 the "Atharva Veda Praticakhya " (1862); the text, 

 with English version, notes, and native commentary, 

 of the " Taittiriya Praticakhya" (1871), which gained 

 for him the Bopp prize from the Berlin Academy as 

 the most important Sanskrit publication of the pre- 

 ceding three years; the "Index Verborum to the 

 Atharva Veda" (1881); and reviews of Karl R. 

 Lepsius's phonetic alphabet and of the opinions of 

 Jean B. Biot, Albrecht F. Weber, and Max Muller on 

 Hindu astronomy. He took an appreciative interest 



