Archive:Josiah Davis Whitney (1818-1902)

Archives > Archive:Biographies > Josiah Davis Whitney (1818-1902)

Child, Hamilton, comp., Gazetteer and Business Directory of Windham County, VT., 1724-1884, (July 1884), pp. 92-93.

J. D. Whitney & Son, organ reed manufacturers. --- Josiah Davis Whitney was born in Ashby, Mass., November 7, 1818. When old enough to use tools (perhaps fifteen or sixteen) he began to work in the shop of his father, Jonas P. Whitney, who was a manufacturer of church organs. When twenty-one years of age he was taken into partnership and continued to make church organs until 1844, when he removed to Springfield, Mass., and engaged in the manufacture of melodeons, pianos, and church organs. In 1851 he removed to Fitchburg, Mass., where he was employed by his father in making melodons or reed organs. He removed to Worcester, Mass., in 1853, where he formed a partnership with Messrs. Rice & Robinson, for the manufacture of organ reeds. He remained in Worcester only one year and then went back to Fitchburg, and soon after got up a set of reed machinery and commenced making reeds. In 1865 Messrs J. Estey & Co., of Brattleboro, purchased the machinery, and Mr. Whitney was hired by them to run it. He remained with Estey & Co., until 1874, the last eight years working by contract, when he sold them the machinery he had invented during his stay with them, and for a year or two went out of business. About 1876, he commenced a new set of machinery, with which he began to make reeds in 1878, in Harmony block [?location in Brattleboro]. July 1, 1879, he took his son, Edwin D. Whitney, into partnership, under the firm name of J. D. Whitney & Son. They are now located in Harmony block and manufacture over half a million organ reeds a year, which are almost entirely used by the Wilcox & White Organ Co. of Meriden, Conn. They employ two men, the machinery being so nearly automatic as to require very much less help than formerly to do the same amount of work.

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This is Josiah Davis⁸ Whitney - (Jonas Prescott⁷, Josiah⁶, Josiah⁵, David⁴, Benjamin³, John², John¹),

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