Historic Nantucket, April 1977, Vol. 2 No. 4

T h e Rev. F r . John D . Whitney, S . J .

Priest and Educator

By Edouard A. Stackpole IN THE ROSTER of Nantucketers as teachers and educators we have an extraordinary number of both men and women, each of whom has had careers in education of varying degree and fortune. Most of these people are well known, ranging from Cyrus Peirce, Maria Mitchell, Augustus Morse and Anna Gardner to Anne Ring, Harriett Williams and Mary Walker of the present times. But there was one individual who has become nearly lost in the passage of time, and who needs not only to be better known but carefully studied as he established an enduring record as an educator in university circles.

The name of this unusual Nantucketer was the Rev. Fr. John Dunning Whitney, S. J. He was born here on July 19, 1850, the son of Thomas J. Whitney, of Nantucket, and Esther A. Dunning, who came from Maine. Father Whitney's grandparents were Daniel Whitney and Sally Coffin. With a seafaring ancestry it was natural that young Whitney would seek the marine world for his future, and in 1868 he left Nantucket High School to sign on as a cadet aboard the training ship Mercury, where he soon became an officer. He was a tall, powerfully built man, with a strong mind to match his robust form.

The story of his conversion to Catholicism is best given in his own words, just as he told it to Georgina P. Curtiss and recorded in her book, "Some Roads To Rome in America." It reads as follows: "I was brought up a Congregationalist; my mother was a devout member of that church. In the morning and again in the evening on Sunday I used to attend the somewhat protracted services which were common in those days, and in the afternoon I went to the Sabbath School. Here we were taught, no doubt, something of the catechism. When I was in my twentieth year I fell in with Mr. A—, a young man a few years older than myself, and a fellow officer on the school ship Mercury, and we were accustomed to talk over religion. He used to say: 'There is only one true Church, and that is either the Catholic Church or the Mormon Church.' That was a