EMPLOYED variously as clerk, land surveyor, customs collector, banker and financier through a professional life spanning seven decades, William A. Whitehead had an eye almost always to what could be observed, quantified and verified. His mathematical bent was manifest early on. As a boy, coveting a classmate’s “half-used” text of arithmetic (a “Cyphering Book”), he … More New Jersey by the numbers
LONG after the event, William A. Whitehead recalled how, through the 1845 founding of a historical society for New Jersey, he penetrated a circle of “several prominent gentlemen … whom I had never met before.”1 By many standards, Whitehead would have been regarded as an interloper. The men who gathered in Trenton that February worked … More Meetings of minds
MORE ancient and enduring than New Jersey’s status as a Revolutionary battleground has been its contest for self-definition. The state has often been coarsely cast as suffering a kind of bipolar disorder, forever torn between the megacities it faces across its two frontier rivers. The nature of that struggle is of course far more complex, … More Try, try again
HISTORY was, ironically, news in New York City during William A. Whitehead’s first years living there. His initiation into the New-York Historical Society’s holdings (a membership in that body would have to wait some years more) came just as it was awakening from a long period of slumber. But far from being the preserve of … More Lights and shadows
“DO you want,” pronounced an eminent journalist, “an appropriate emblem of this country, and this age? Then stand on the side-walks of New-York, and watch the universal transit on the first of May.” We could suppose the scene to which Lydia Maria Child referred was some rite of rejuvenation, an urban awakening to the warmth … More Moving Day
NORTH of the lines described by Grand and Canal Streets, surveyors under the 1811 Commissioners’ Plan laid out a warp and weft of avenues and perpendicular streets for much of Manhattan’s 12-mile length: an imaginary grid, but one destined to vanquish the natural environment and the resistance of property owners. This it did with unwonted … More A city of modern ruins
THE home of the Stuyvesant Institute, its stately façade aligned with Broadway, admitted within its walls a wide range of organizations, activities and initiatives, all in some way justified by a founding commitment to “the diffusion of useful knowledge.” Barely a year old in November 1838 when William A. Whitehead first passed through its doors, … More The Dunlap benefit
SUNDRY and sustained attachments bound William A. Whitehead early to the nation’s commercial capital. They were established just after the Revolutionary War and well before his birth, upon his father’s arrival as a young immigrant from the Caribbean. A furniture-maker’s apprentice turned promising craftsman, then cashier in Wall Street’s most enduring financial institution, the elder … More Barrow Street
CITY fathers in 1876 planned a Fourth of July more memorable than any Key West had yet seen. They would not only mark the centennial of American independence, but use the occasion to dedicate a new city hall. Walter C. Maloney was commissioned to deliver an address on Key West’s history, but with scant forethought … More Together apart
DISPLACED to Key West from the home of his boyhood, far from the old centers of culture, power, learning and earning, William A. Whitehead soon found that his new locale itself possessed a particular magnetism. An ideal site for scientific exploration both on its own and adjacent shores, the island attracted an array of “naturalists … More The collectors (part 2)
