248 Menioir 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 hfe, 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 hght. 

 Four children, a son and three daughters,* added, successively, 

 fresh attractions to the family circle. Happy in his home, and easy 

 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 hajopy tenor, he passed the five following years, 

 when a formidable maladyf began to make its approaches, by a slow 

 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 of 



were endeavoring to have his claim to the invention set aside, on the ground, that 

 the teeth in his machine were made of wire, inserted into the cylinder of wood, 

 while in the machine of Holmes, the teeth were cut in plates, or iron surrounding 

 the cylinder, forming a circular saw. Mr. Whitney, by an ingenious device, (con- 

 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 of ivires, 

 while he prepared another cylinder in which the wire teeth were made to look 

 like saw teeth. The two cylinders were produced in court, and the witnesses were 

 called on to testify which was the invention of Whitney, and which that of Holmes. 

 They accordingly swore the saw teeth upon Whitney, and the wire teeth upon 

 Holmes ; upon which the judge declared that it was unnecessary to proceed any 

 farther, the principle of both being manifestly the same. 



* The youngest of these died in September, 1823, aged one year and nine months. 

 Two daughters, and a son bearing his father's name, (the youngest of the three,) 

 still survive. 



t An enlargement of the prostrate gland. 



