Archive:The Whitney Family of Connecticut, page xvi

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The Whitney Family of Connecticut

by S. Whitney Phoenix
(New York: 1878)

Transcribed by Robert L. Ward.

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xvi
The Whitneys
discovered, though carefully looked for in England by Mr. Samuel Austin Whitney, of Glassboro', N. J., Horatio G. Somerby, Esq., and Mr. Henry Austin Whitney, of Boston, Mass. It Is known, however, that he lived for a while at Isleworth, about nine miles from London, on the bank of the Thames, opposite Richmond; for in the parish register of that place Mr. Somerby found, in 1871, records of the baptism of three of his children.1 It is probable that John and Elinor left Isleworth shortly after the baptism of their son Richard in 1624, as no further trace of them is found there. Of their nine children six married and had offspring; and their descendants are now very numerous in all parts of the Union.2 Among those who have risen to distinction may be mentioned Eli Whitney, the world-renowned inventor of the cotton-gin, William Dwight Whitney, an eminent philologist, professor of Sanscrit in Yale College, and Josiah Dwight Whitney, the head of the State Geological Survey of California, a geologist of the first rank.
Other early immigrants to New England, of the name, were Jeremiah Whitney, who appeared at Plymouth as early as 1643, and Thomas Whitney, whose wife Winifred died 23 July 1660--concerning both of whom we know nothing more-and Stephen Whitney, who is mentioned by Savage as an early settler of Huntington, L. I. A careful examination of the records of that town, however, has failed to confirm the statement; and it seems probable that in this case the painstaking and accurate author of the Genealogical Dictionary was mistaken.
No connection has been traced between the above-named settlers, nor between any of them and Henry Whitney, the founder of the Connecticut family, whose descendants we have essayed to trace in the present work.
Ancestry of Henry Whitney. The ancestry of Henry Whitney has been fully established by a skilful genealogist, Mrs. H. A. De Salis (née Bainbridge), of London, after several years of research.3,a The first twenty generations of her pedigree are extracted from The Golden Grove, with corrections and additions from the visitation of Herefordshire and other sources. This manuscript was compiled in 1703, by Owen Thomas, Deputy-Assistant to Garter King-at-Arms, from Welsh genealogies, records, and private papers furnished by living representatives of the families whose history it contains. It is the property of the Earl of Cawdor, but is now deposited in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, London, to be returned to the owner whenever he may desire it. While the pedigrees of which it is composed are received
  1 Whitney's First Known use of Whitney as a Surname, p. xviii.
  2 "A short account of the descendants of John and Elinor Whitney", mainly confined to the first three generations, was published at Boston, Mass., an 1857, by Mr. Henry Austin Whitney. The Rev. Fred. A. Whitney, of Brighton, Mass., is understood to be engaged upon a revised and greatly-enlarged edition of this work. See The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. III, p. 142.
  3 See the chart opposite p. xxii.

  a The alleged ancestry of Henry Whitney as supplied to the author has proven to be fabricated. See a report and an article detailing the fraud.

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