Whitney, Ontario
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Whitney is a community in the Canadian province of Ontario, located in the municipality of South Algonquin, as part of Airy Township (incorporated in 1962), Nipissing District, Ontario.
[edit] History
The unincorporated village of Whitney, Ontario, was established in 1895 as the site for the sawmill of the St. Anthony Lumber Company, of Minnesota, and is named for the general manager of that firm, E. C. Whitney.
The St. Anthony Lumber Company in Minneapolis, was located on the west bank of the Mississippi River, near Saint Anthony Falls. The company officers were: Eldridge M. Fowler of Chicago, president, and Arthur Hill of Saginaw, vice president. Edwin Canfield Whitney, who was born near Morrisburg, Ontario, had moved to the American mid-west shortly after the Civil War, working in the lumber trade, he became manager of the ST. Anthony Lumber Company.
By 1892 work had commenced on the Ottawa, Arnprior & Parry Sound Railway, by Ottawa lumberman John Rudolphus Booth. Booth's sawmill at the Chaudière Falls, was considered to be one of the largest in North America, second only to a mill in Minneapolis. At the end of 1892, Booth arranged a takeover of the adjacent Perley and Pattee mill, from the estate of his former colleague William Goodhue Perley.
Timber berths on the upper Madawaska River, in the townships of Airy and Nightingale, belonging to the Perley & Pattee Lumber Company, were sold in 1894, to the St. Anthony Lumber Company, of Minneapolis. As the OA&PS Railway was being constructed to access this area, E. C. Whitney had persuaded the management of the St. Anthony firm to purchase the timber berths.
About a year after the Whitney sawmill was built, Messrs. Fowler and Hill sold the Minneapolis mill and associated timber limits to Frederick Weyerhaeuser, of St. Paul. E. C. Whitney who had large timber holdings near Brainerd, Minnesota, sold these to Weyerhaeuser as well, making enough profit that he was able to purchase his partners interests in the Whitney concern and continue its operation on his own.
Edwin Canfield Whitney lived in Ottawa, and was an older brother of James Pliny Whitney.
