Family:Whitney, Charles (1834-a1880)

Charles⁷ Whitney (David⁶, Samuel⁵, Solomon⁴, David³, Joshua², John¹), son of David⁶ and Margaret (Karr) Whitney, was born 30 Jan 1834, Almond, NY.

He married, 25 Mar 1855, Wood County, OH, Orrilla Paine. She was born 8 May 1834.

At the age of eighteen years he left home in Ohio and crossed the plains to California, spending two and a half years in the mines. Returning home in the fall of 1854, he attended the district school during the winter, and married the following spring, and settled on a claim near Rochester, MN, which he rented in the fall of 1855, and sold in the fall of 1858, and spent the following season in the mountains of Colorado. Went into manufacturing and merchandising in the spring of 1860 in Rochester, MN; sold out in 1869, and together with his brother John organized the Whitney Manufacturing Company, to perfect and make automatic grain binders, and in connection with him went to Saint Louis, and organized the Sumner & Whitney Manufacturing Company, for perfecting and making grain binders. He operated in this until 1876, and in 1877 entered into an arrangement with C. W. and W. W. Marsh, of Sycamore, IL, to operate in inventing and perfecting harvesting machinery. In 1885 he left this business, and for several years his business was making settlements with the various infringers of his grain binder patents, and also operating as practical, theoretical, and mechanical expert in patent cases, and for the last three years (1889-92) made some valuable inventions in photographic cameras of the hand type, being the first to make a field-glass and roll-holder camera all in one instrument; also the first to make a cut-off roll-holder camera, whereby each exposure is severed from the roll as taken. These, together with a number of other features of value, and some inventions in the same class made by his sons George and Frank in the line of magazine cameras, which he has charge of as attorney of record, are now being manufactured for the market by the Blair Camera Company, of Boston; the Sevil Adams Company, of New York City, and the Rochester Optical Company, of Rochester, New York. Resided 804 No. Park Av., Chicago, Illinois, Hubbard Woods and Winnetka, Illinois.

Children of Charles⁷ and Orrilla (Paine) Whitney:

i.	George8 Whitney, b. 25 Mar 1856; m. Helen Louise Jones.
ii.	Fred Whitney, b. Oct 1858; d. Jul 1881.
iii.	Frank Whitney, b. Apr 1860; m. Cora Nesbit.

References

• All data imported from Frederick Clifton Pierce, The Descendants of John Whitney, Who Came from London, England, to Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1635, (Chicago: 1895), p. 403.

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Copyright © 2006, 2008, Robert L. Ward and the Whitney Research Group