William Collins Whitney

William Collins Whitney
31st United States Secretary of the Navy
In office March 7, 1885 – March 4, 1889
President	Grover Cleveland
Preceded by	William E. Chandler
Succeeded by	Benjamin F. Tracy
Personal details
Born	(1841-07-05)July 5, 1841 Conway, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	February 2, 1904(1904-02-02) (aged 62) New York City, New York, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouses	Flora Payne ​ ​ (m. 1869; died 1893)​ Edith Randolph ​ ​ (m. 1896; died 1899)​
Children	5, including William, Dorothy
Relatives	James Scollay Whitney (Father)
Education	Williston Seminary Yale University (BA) Harvard University
Signature

William Collins Whitney (July 5, 1841 – February 2, 1904) was an American political leader and

Early life

William Whitney was born at

From 1875 to 1882

In 1883, through the Broadway Railroad Company, Whitney became involved in a struggle with Jacob Sharp and

When Whitney left office in 1889, steel vessels completed or under construction included the armored cruiser (later battleship) Maine; monitors Puritan, Amphitrite, Monadnock, Terror and Miantonomoh; protected cruisers Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Newark, Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and San Francisco; dynamite-gun cruiser Vesuvius; dispatch vessel Dolphin; gunboats Yorktown, Concord, Bennington and Petrel; and torpedo boat Cushing. These constituted the nucleus of the "New Navy"^[9][10] During Whitney's four years in the cabinet, his home in Washington, D.C., was a social center of great attraction. In 1888, Yale conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D.

Whitney joined Charles T. Barney, Henry F. Dimock, W.E.D. Stokes, Francis W. Jenks, and others in forming the New York Loan and Improvement Company in 1890. This concern developed the Washington Heights section of New York City. Barney was president of the company when he died in 1907, three years after Whitney.

Thoroughbred horse racing

William Whitney was also a major investor in

In 1901 Whitney led a group of investors who bought the Saratoga Race Course, which had been in decline. Whitney made major improvements to the track and is widely credited with revitalizing racing at Saratoga.^[16][17]

Personal life

Standard Oil Company. The Whitneys lived in the now-lost Stevens Mansion at 2 West 57th Street^{[citation needed}

], where they commissioned Stanford White to renovate the interiors. They had five children:

• Harry Payne Whitney (1872–1930), who married Gertrude Vanderbilt (1875–1942)
• Almeric Hugh Paget, 1st Baron Queenborough
  (1861–1949)
• William Payne Whitney (1876–1927), who married Helen Julia Hay
  (1875–1944)
• Oliver Whitney (1878–1883), who died aged 5^[citation needed]
• Dorothy Payne Whitney (1887–1968), who first married Willard Dickerman Straight (1880–1918) and later married Leonard Knight Elmhirst (1893–1974)

Flora Payne Whitney died on February 5, 1893, at age fifty-two. Two years later, in 1896, William Whitney remarried to widow Sibyl Randolph (née May). He gave his home at 2 West 57th Street to son Harry and his new bride Gertrude, and acquired for his new wife a residence at 871 Fifth Avenue at 68th Street in New York City, and commissioned McKim, Mead & White to do a $3.5 million renovation of the house. In 1898, Sibyl Whitney suffered a horse riding accident at their estate, Joye Cottage, in the Aiken Winter Colony (now known as Hitchcock Woods) in Aiken, South Carolina,^[7] and died at age forty-one on May 6, 1899.^[19]

Whitney was a member of

Patriarch Society until its dissolution in April 1897.^[20] On January 5, 1901, at his residence at 871 Fifth Avenue, Whitney gave a debutante ball for his niece, Helen Barney.^[21]

He remained active in street-railway affairs until the reorganization of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company in 1902. At that time he retired from all personal identification with the company.[22]

William Collins Whitney died on February 2, 1904, and was interred at

GNP).^[23][24]

Honors

In his honor:

• The
  USS Whitney (AD-4) was named after him when launched on October 12, 1923, at the Boston Navy Yard
• The William C. Whitney Wilderness Area of the Adirondack Park in Upstate New York is also named in his honor.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II, p. 407. New York: James T. White & Company, 1899. Reprint of 1891 edition.
2. ^ The University Magazine, vol. 5 no. 5, November 1891
3. ^ Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XX, p. 165. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936.
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f}  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Whitney, William Collins". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 611.
5. ^ During nearly the same period, 1875 to 1881, his brother-in-law, Henry F. Dimock, was commissioner of docks for the Port of New York.
6. ^ ^{a b} The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, op. cit.
7. ^ ^{a b} Dictionary of American Biography, op. cit.
8. ^ Appleton, D. (1889). Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events, Volume 10; Volume 25. D. Appleton and Company. p. 760. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
9. ^ Lieut. W.S. Hughes, USN, "Our New Navy", The American Magazine, September 1887, pp. 549-560.
10. ^ Robert Gardiner (ed. dir.), Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, pp. 139-140, 145-146, 150-152, 159, 163-164. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1979.
11. ^ "Mr. Barney's Career. Prominent All His Life in Finance, Art, and Realty Operations", The New York Times, November 15, 1907.
12. ^ Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society?, p. 502. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960.
13. ^ New York Times, October Mountain Deeded to State, March 24, 1922
14. ^ The Times, June 6, 1901.
15. ^ Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XX, p. 166.
16. ^ New York Racing Association. "NYRA and Saratoga 150 Committee Unveil Whitney Viewing Stand at Oklahoma Training Track in Celebration of 150th Anniversary". NYRA. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
17. ^ "Timeline: 1900-1909". Saratoga 150. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
18. ^ Newspaper Enterprise Association (1914). The World Almanac & Book of Facts. Newspaper Enterprise Association. p. 662. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
19. ^ New York Times - May 7, 1899
20. ^ Eric Homberger, Mrs. Astor's New York. Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age, pp. 218-219. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
21. ^ Amory, pp. 502–03.
22. ^ Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XX, p. 165.
23. OCLC 33818143
24. ^ Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Whitney, William Collins" . Encyclopedia Americana.

External links

Wikisource has the text of a 1889 Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography article about William Collins Whitney.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Collins Whitney.

• Works by or about William Collins Whitney at Internet Archive
• William Collins Whitney biography on the Whitney Research Group website.
• Whitney at the Naval Department
• "Whitney, William Collins" . Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
• "Whitney, William Collins" .
  New International Encyclopedia
  . 1905.

Government offices
Preceded by William E. Chandler	United States Secretary of the Navy 1885–1889	Succeeded by Benjamin F. Tracy