CHAPTER I. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. WALT WHITMAN was born at West Hills, Huntington Township, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York State, May 31, 1819the second of a family of nine children, seven boys and two girls.* The earliest lineal ancestor I am at present able to trace was Abijah W., born in England about 1560. The Rev. Zechariah W., his son, born 1595, came from England in the ship "True-Love" in 1635, and lived at Milford, Connecticut, whence his son Joseph W. some time before 1660 passed over to Huntington and settled there. From him (Savage's "Genealogical Dictionary," vol. 4, p. 524) the Long Island Whitmans descended. Although Joseph W. does not appear to have been very well off in 1660, there is evidence in the town records that he afterwards became so. It is probable that he or one of his sons purchased the farm at West Hills on which the poet's great grandfather, grandfather, and father lived. The Whitmans were, and are still, a solid, tall, strong-framed, long-lived race of men, moderate of speech, friendly, fond of their land and of horses and cattle, sluggish in their passions, but JOHN WHITMAN, born in England, ROBERT WHITMAN, born 1615, fearful when once started. During the American Revolution of 1776-'83, they were staunch patriots or "rebels," and several of the name were soldiers under Washington, two of them officers of some rank. The poet's father, Walter W., after a childhood passed at West Hills on his parents' farm, when about 15 was put apprentice to the carpenter's trade in New York City, and lived and worked there as youth and young man. He married in 1816. His busi ness afterwards for many years extended into various parts of Long Island. He was a large, quiet, serious man, very kind to children and animals, and a good citizen, neighbor and parent. In his trade he was noted as a superior framer. Not a few of his barn and house frames, with their seasoned timbers and careful braces and joists, are still standing in Suffolk and Queen's counties and in Brooklyn, strong and plumb as ever. On his mother's side the poet is descended from the Van Velsors, a family of farmers settled also on their own land near Cold Spring Harbor, three or four miles from West Hills. They seem to have been a warm-hearted and sympathetic race. An aged man who had known them well, said to me one day at Huntington, "Old Major Van Velsor was the best of men; there are no better men than he was—and his wife was just as good a woman as he was a man." Walt Whitman's mother, Louisa Van Velsor, was their daughter. The family was of Holland Dutch descent. The men and boys were fond of horses, the raising of which from blooded stock was a large part of their occupation, and Louisa, when young, was herself a daring and spirited rider. As a woman and mother she was of marked spiritual and intuitive nature, remarkably healthy and strong, had a kind, generous heart, good sense, and a cheerful and even temper. Walt Whitman himself makes much of the feminine side of his ancestry. Both his grandmothers (with each of whom he spent a part of every year until he was quite a big lad), appear to have been specially noble and endearing characters. At the death of his own mother he spoke of her, and his sister-in-law Martha, as "the best and sweetest women I ever saw, or ever expect to see." Not a little of the significance of the poet's Whitman and |