About the Whitney - Raymond Organ Company of Cleveland, OH: GEORGE FRANKLIN WHITNEY, son of William Benjamin and Marilla L. (Clement) Whitney, was born in Petersham, Massachusetts, May 29, 1847, and died in Cleveland, Ohio, June 16, 1918. He was compelled to leave school at nine years of age, when he left his home and worked for other people. He studied privately, and obtained in that way a general knowledge of medicine. He continued his private study until twenty-three years of age, earning his own living during the fourteen years following his leaving home. He had no assistance whatever in financing his education, and at the age of twenty-three years, when he entered college in Irvington, Indiana, he had earned every dollar he had ever had. After finishing classical courses in Irvington, he entered Western Reserve University, in the medical department, there continuing until March 3, 1886, when he was awarded his degree of M. D., being then thirty-nine years of age. This unlearned farmer boy had accomplished a wonderfully courageous feat, having started from home at the age of nine years, making his own way, financing a classical and medical college education, and beginning medical practice at an age when physicians are supposed to be established for life. He had been in various occupations after leaving home, and before entering the medical college he had been engaged in business in Cleveland, Ohio, under the firm name of Whitney & Raymond Organ Factory, their place of business on Windsor Avenue and 55th Street. He had been in the same business in Galion, Ohio, in 1877, in the Union Organ Company; and in Dayton, Ohio, was connected with Childs Brothers, organ manufacturers. He was an expert piano and organ tuner, specializing in organ tuning. Even after entering college, he worked for Childs Brothers in Irvington, and in this way paid his college expenses. It was a high and worthy ambition that actuated Mr. Whitney, and all through the years he never for a moment lost sight of his goal, a medical education. After settling in practice in Cleveland, he made most of the medicines he prescribed, they being mostly tinctures and distillations from roots and herbs. He built up an enormous practice, and was known through his medicines from coast to coast, also in Europe and Japan. His medicines were well known, and his prescriptions were so valuable that they are today (1927) popular and in demand, although Dr. Whitney, who prepared them, has passed away, and the sign, Dr. George F. Whitney, has disappeared from the lawn of his former residence on East 115th Street, Cleveland, Ohio. The office is practically as he left it at his passing in 1918, and Mrs. Whitney continues to have frequent visitors at the office for some of his well known prescriptions. Dr. Whitney was a lodge member of the Free and Accepted Masons; Webb Chapter, Royal Arch Masons; Oriental Commandery, Knights Templar; and was a noble of the Mystic Shrine. Dr. Whitney married, August 26, 1878, in Dennison, Ohio, Mary Catherine Wyne, daughter of George M. and Mary Elizabeth (Kirkham) Wyne, her father an engineer and a machinist of Dennison; her mother was of French descent. (See Wyne III.) Mrs. Whitney survives her husband, and resides in a beautiful home at No. 1661 East 115th Street, Cleveland, Ohio. She is a member of the Presbyterian Church, and interested in many other activities.