Harvard Historical Society - Finding Fanny Whitney

Finding Fanny Whitney:
Civil War Letters from Charles E Whitney to his Sister Frances Louise
With Live Civil War music 
Thursday,  September 18, 2025  7:00  P.M.
215 Still River Road, Harvard,  MA
A Living History Program


William Channing Whitney was born April 11, 1851, in Harvard, Massachusetts, the son of  Benjamin Franklin Whitney and Louisa Lawrence Whitney, and  the youngest brother of a large family including  Charles and Fanny.   He was named for the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing.  His family lived at 13 Fairbank and then at 2 Littleton Road. 
William was educated at the local Harvard school,  Lawrence Academy in Groton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and earned a Bachelor of Science from the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1872. 
William worked in Boston architectural offices for several years during the 1870s. After moving to Minneapolis in 1878, he formed an architectural partnership with James C. Plant and 1885 he began to practice on his own.  He gained a reputation among the Minneapolis manufacturing and milling elite for his high-style residential designs.