Whittlesey, Charles 1808 - 1886
Geologist, Archaeologist, and Soldier
b. Southington, Connecticut, 1808
d. Cleveland, Ohio, 1886
Educated at West Point, Whittlesey was stationed at Fort Howard in Green Bay when the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832; his memoirs of the war were printed in Wisconsin Historical Collections, vol 1: 64-85 and vol. 10: 177. He settled in Ohio after the war and intially practiced law, but in 1837 he joined the staff of the Ohio geological survey; he was among the first archaeologists to carefully investigate the ancient mounds of that state. In 1847 Whittlesey (pictured here in his field outfit) agreed to survey the mineral lands of Lake Superior for the U.S. government. After consulting with Increase Lapham (1811-1875), he spent much of the next four years at that work. While in the field he also documented the prehistoric copper mines of the region, and his scholarly monograph "Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior," was published in 1863 by the Smithsonian Institution. He later worked as a mining engineer in the Upper Mississippi Valley (1851-1858) and on the Wisconsin Geological Survey (1858-1861) until the outbreak of the Civil War. Whittlesey was appointed colonel of an Ohio regiment and fought at Shiloh, but resigned his commission due to illness in 1862. He spent the remainder of his life in the Cleveland area, ultimately publishing several books and more than 200 articles on history, archaeology, geology, and other scholarly subjects.
Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biograpy (N.Y.: Appleton & Co., 1889), vol.VI: 496.
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