William Collins Whitney

William Collins Whitney (July 5, 1841February 2, 1904) was an American political leader and financier and a prominent descendant of the John Whitney family. He served as Secretary of the Navy in the first administration of President Grover Cleveland from 1885 through 1889. A conservative reformer, he was considered a Bourbon Democrat. Early life William Whitney was born at Conway, Massachusetts, of Puritan stock. The family were descended from John Whitney of London, who settled at Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1635. William Whitney's father was Brigadier General James Scollay Whitney; his mother, Laurinda Collins, was a descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. Laurinda's paternal grandfather, Joseph Collins (1747-1826) was a great-grandson of Alice Bradford Adams (1659-1745) through her daughter, Alice Adams Collins (1682-1734). The older Alice was a daughter of William Bradford the Younger. William Whitney had a well known older brother, industrialist Henry Melville Whitney (1839–1923), president of the Metropolitan Steamship Company, founder of the West End Street Railway Company of Boston, and later founder of the Dominion Coal Company and Dominion Iron and Steel Company in Sydney, Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island. His sister Laurinda Collins "Lily" Whitney married Charles T. Barney, who became the president of the Knickerbocker Trust Company. Another sister, Susan Collins Whitney, married attorney Henry F. Dimock.