Talk:Harry Whitney

Given name and relatives

I happened to develop another Whitney article on Henry Martyn Whitney. According to the Whitney web site I think this person's given name might have been "Henry". He seems to be known as Harry so keep that as article title, but might want to mention and have more details on relations since the name has so many notables. I think this one was about a fourth cousin of H. M. W Nowicki (talk) 01:33, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

To expand, I think that book shows a tree with common ancestor John Whitney (c. 1645–1720) and Elizabeth Smith (c. 1655–1741):

• Richard Whitney (1687–1735) married Hannah Darling
  • John Whitney (1720–1805)
    • John Whitney (1754–1835)
      • Samuel Whitney (1793–1845) list of Missionaries to Hawaii
        • Henry Martyn Whitney (1824–1904)
• Josiah Whitney (c. 1700–1750)
  • Henry Whitney (1736–1811)
    • Stephen Whitney (1776–1860) married Harriet Suydam, presumably Stephen Whitney (ship) is namesake?
      • Henry Whitney (1812–1856) married Hannah Eugenia (Lawrence) (1815–1844)
        • Stephen Whitney (1841–a1900) married Margaret Lawrence Johnson (1841–a1880)
          • Henry "Harry" Whitney (1872–1915) married Eunice Bartlett Chesebro

note birth year of 1872 instead of 1873. These big books often have mistakes, but might be a start. That would make them fourth cousins once removed by my count. W Nowicki (talk) 21:13, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe my guy's name was in fact "Henry"-- I noticed it on the census you linked to, and had thought of it before since he was descended from Henrys. He was descended from the proto-Henry Whitney (16th century immigrant). That is certainly his lineage you show above, with all those Henrys and Stephens. Check out my draft of a Stephen Whitney article at my user page.

In the family and in all texts and articles he is referred to as "Harry". As I noted in a response to you on my user page, I think that 1873 is the correct birth year. Wildcatman99 (talk) 04:38, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

So I would say that in the article. That is, in the body say he was born with the name "Henry" but called "Harry" because there were so many Henrys in the family. I did already add him to the Henry Whitney disambig page. As for birth year, the census data on the web site says 1872 and Samuel Lawrence Whitney born October 21, 1874, about two years later. A birth in December 1872 would put Samuel's ten months after, which might be possible less likely. It might help if you gave a year and isbn if you have it for your source too. You can always say "(or 1872)" and cite the 1872 source, but keep the 1873 in the other places. But these are nits. Some day Bradish Johnson of course might make an article if there are more mentions of him. W Nowicki (talk) 21:55, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Page numbers

I think the complaints in this case the complaint was just paragraphs without citations, not page numbers. A general rule is that each paragraphs should have at least one citation in them. Quite reasonable.

There are a number of different styles for citing page numbers, alas. Some editors use the two-level style of "lastname, page" in a section called "Notes" and then a separate listing of books by last name in a section "Bibliography" (which is ambiguous since that word is also used for a list of works by an author etc.) or "References". I personally find the two-level style old-fashioned, now that many sources are on-line and have search capability, do not list authors, or no physical page numbers. It is also more work for both the editor and reader who wants to verify or expand. If you are using a one-level style, then the "lastname, firstname" style of author is also not needed in my opinion. Instead I would say adding isbn numbers or year of publication etc. would be more helpful. If only a few pages are used out of a source, then the |pages= list,of,pages parameter can be used as you did for the Wright book for example. When a book like Whitney's own here is cited many times, a compromise is to use the {{rp}} template; I took the liberty of giving examples for the ones you mentioned. It gives the same info as the two-level scheme, with the downside of making the footnotes in line a bit more ugly. In this case I would not sweat it, since the entire book is online and searchable. I prefer the one-level style with as much info and links to online sources as you can get.

And you do not need to add <br /> at the end of paragraphs; a blank line will suffice. Use them only in non-body fields like infoboxes. W Nowicki (talk) 19:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

New image

The archive department at the Ewell Sale Stewart Library at the ANS in Philadelphia uploaded and added a new image from their collection, showing Harry Whitney with two Inuit women. I first saw the image in a Smithsonian Magazine article. It is a great addition to the article. Wildcatman99 (talk) 17:08, 15 March 2011 (UTC)