"Mr. Whitney is one of the fairest-minded and best-hearted cannibals I ever knew, if I do say it myself." --Mark Twain http://www.twainquotes.com/Galaxy/187012h.html Rev. Samuel-6 (John5- John4- Richard3- John2- Henry1) Whitney merits a whopping ten pages in Phoenix, but his son Henry Martin (or "Martyn" per Phoenix) barely gets two sentences: Henry Martyn Whitney http://www.whitneygen.org/archives/extracts/phoenix/p0691-0695.html#3814 Samuel Whitney http://www.whitneygen.org/archives/extracts/phoenix/p0251-0255.html#1149 Our site has little to add about this particular Henry. Fortunately other sites take up the slack. Henry served as the first Postmaster of Honolulu from 1850 to 1856, during which time he extended mail service throughout the Kingdom of Hawai'i. He returned as Postmaster General for the entire Kingdom, 1883-86. "Henry Whitney was born in Hawaii of missionary parents and went to New England for education and training. He returned in 1849 to work in the Government Printing Office. While in New England, he became profoundly deaf and never regained his hearing. The royal decree of December 20, 1850, officially appointed him Postmaster of Honolulu... In his post office room at The Polynesian Office, Whitney designed Hawaii's famous Missionary stamps. They were printed on the GPO's press in the adjoining room and issued on October 1, 1851. Also in this office in mid-1853, Whitney issued Hawaii's 5¢ and 13¢ engraved stamps, printed in Boston, portraying King Kamehameha III... Citing a conflict of interest between his private newspaper and his government position, Whitney left his job as Postmaster of Honolulu on July 1, 1856. Whitney expanded the duties of the office to include responsibility for all mail service throughout the kingdom. During Whitney's tenure, post offices and overland carrier routes were established on all the islands." http://www.hawaiianstamps.com/honopopo.html Whitney Point, N.Y., got its name from its original postmaster, Thomas Whitney. Had Hawaiians thought the same way, Honolulu might well be called Whitney Beach today. Henry also founded the Kingdom's first independent newspaper, the Honolulu Advertiser. When he had left that after many years, he accidentally started another paper, Whitney's Bulletin, which eventually became the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Honolulu is one of the smallest markets left with two daily papers. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/commemorative/history http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/ http://starbulletin.com/ I'm proud to say I-- well, I and all my third-grade classmates at Royal School-- made the front page of one of these papers, though I forget which. Our classroom was said to be in the oldest building of any kind on the island, and the paper sent a photographer around to shoot us running out of the school on the last day of the term. It was completely faked, though-- we still had two hours to go, and we had to go back into the classroom to wait it out. This was the kind of fraud Henry devoted his life to combating! Anyway, below are some more links and excerpts about Henry and his journalism. And the Advertiser commemorative linked to above is worth reading in its entirety. It also has a picture of Henry. Cheers, Ron Kyser "Both the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin were started by Henry Whitney, the son of New England missionaries who came to the islands in the early 19th century, when Hawaii was an independent kingdom. Whitney founded the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, the precursor to the Advertiser, in 1856 and then the Daily Bulletin, the forerunner of the Star-Bulletin, in 1882. The Daily Bulletin merged with the Hawaiian Star in 1912." http://www.asianweek.com/1999_09_23/p13_feature.htm "In 1855 a most remarkable newspaper appeared -- The Folio, Hawaii's first women's newspaper. It put forth the arguments of the mid- century feminist movement, including among others women's rights to vote and take on leadership roles in the church. Although it was a single-issue newspaper, it was reprinted entirely in the popular monthly the Friend, giving it a wide readership. The articles in The Folio were anonymously written, but newspaper scholar Helen Chapin says signs point to Catherine Whitney as the editor and principal author. Whitney was married to Polynesian editor and Advertiser founder Henry Whitney." "On July 2, 1856, Henry Whitney hand-pulled from his press the first copies of what has become Hawaii's longest continually published newspaper. "Whitney was an Island-born son of missionaries sent to the mainland for education where he learned the printing trade. "He returned to Hawaii and, for awhile, ran the government-sponsored Hawaiian/English weekly, The Polynesian. "But Whitney chafed under government censorship so set off to start a newspaper 'independent of government control and patronage.' "The result was the Pacific Commercial Advertiser. 'Commercial' was an accurate title -- the first front page alone carried 52 ads along with news accounts of King Kamehameha IV's wedding. Whitney devoted a great deal of coverage to the shipping industry and benefitted from its solid advertising support. "Whitney was fluent in Hawaiian and the early Advertiser carried a section in Hawaiian, Ha Hoku Loa O Hawaii (Morning Star). "Whitney was not enamored of everything Hawaiian, however, and his editorial campaigns managed to rile just about everyone. "His missionary roots were showing when he bitterly attacked the hula as a pagan ritual that kept Hawaiians away from honest labor. "He went up against the royal government and the emerging sugar barons simultaneously by arguing against the monarchy-sponsored plans to import Asian field laborers. "Whitney sold the Advertiser after 14 years but stayed on as its editor for another 10. "The early Advertiser boasted such writers as Mark Twain, Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson. "Whitney left the paper in 1880 when it was sold to sugar baron Claus Spreckels -- a man Whitney wanted nothing to do with. "Sprekels was a close friend to King Kalakaua and used the Advertiser to promote government causes and the Royalist viewpoint -- a stand unpopular with the growing number of businessmen who wanted closer U.S. ties. "Whitney, meanwhile, went into the stationery business and opened a small store by the waterfront. Finding it hard to get the news business out of his veins, he posted a "daily bulletin" in the window of his shop, filled with news items and the comings and goings of ships. "His daily postings were so popular that when his shop was purchased a few years later, the new owner converted them into a newspaper called the Daily Bulletin -- the forerunner of today's Honolulu Star- Bulletin." http://www2.hawaii.edu/~tbrislin/jourhist.html