248 Memoir of the Life of Eli Whitney. 
In the midst of these fruitless efforts to secure to himself some 
portion of his advantages, which so many of his fellow citizens were 
reaping from his ingenuity, his armory proceeded with a sure but 
steady space, which bore him on to affluence. For the few follow- 
ing years he occupied himself principally in the concerns of his man- 
ufactory, inventing new kinds of machinery, and improving and per- 
fecting the old. 
In January, 1817, Mr. Whitney was married to Miss Henrietta F. 
Edwards, youngest daughter of the Hon. Pierpont Edwards, late 
Judge of the District Court for the State of Connecticut. The fond 
and quiet scenes of domestic life, after which he had so long aspired, 
but from which he had been debarred by the embarrassed, or un- 
settled state of his affairs, now spread before him in the fairest light. 
Four children, a son and three daughters,* added, successively, 
fresh attractions to the family circle. Happy in his home, and esy 
in his fortune, with a measure of respectability among his fellow 
citizens, and celebrity abroad, which might well satisfy an honora- 
ble ambition, he seemed to have in prospect, after a day of anxiety 
and toil, an evening unusually bright and serene. 
In this uniform and happy tenor, he passed the five following yeas 
when a formidable malady+ began to make its approaches, by 26% 
but hopeless progress, which at length terminated his life. 
We are indebted to a near friend and eye witness, for the follow- 
ing account of his last illness. In September, 1822, immediately 
after his return from Washington, he experienced the first attack 0 
were endeavoring to have his claim to the invention set aside, on the ground, oe 
the teeth in his machine were made of wire, inserted into the cylinder of we 
while in the machine of Holmes, the teeth were cut in plates, oF iron su 
the cylinder, forming a circular saw. Mr. Whitney, by an ingenious device, od 
sisting chiefly of sinking the plate below the surface of the cylinder, and suffering 
the teeth to project,) contrived to give to the saw teeth the appearance copie 
while he prepared another cylinder in which the wire teeth were ™ 6 
like saw teeth. The two cylinders were produced in court, and the witnesses 
called on to testify which was the invention of Whitney nd which that of Holmes: 
They accordingly swore the saw teeth upon Whitn d the wire teeth 
Holmes; upon which the judge declared that it was essary t0 ne” 
farther, the principle of both being manifestly the same. ths. 
* The youngest of these died in September, 1823, aged one year and nine gard 
Two daughters, and a son bearing his father’s name, (the youngest cael 
still survive. 
+ An enlargement of the prostrate gland. 
