Edwina Whitney

In 1866, two years before Edwina's birth, her parents, Edwin and Minerva Whitney, founded the Connecticut Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Storrs, Connecticut. Over nine years, the home housed and educated more than 150 boys and girls orphaned by the American Civil War. The orphanage's main building was known as Whitney Hall or "Old Whitney." The orphanage shut down in 1875 and was sold in 1878 to a neighbor, Augustus Storrs. In 1881, Storrs donated the buildings and fifty acres of land to the State of Connecticut to found Storrs Agricultural College. Whitney Hall thus became the UConn's first campus building. Edwina Whitney was born in the Whitney homestead on Route 195 in Storrs, Connecticut, on February 26, 1868. Her father died a few months before she was born, leaving her mother to run the orphanage and raise their daughter. Edwina attended grade school in Storrs alongside future Connecticut governor Wilbur Lucius Cross. She attended Middletown High School and Northfield Seminary and earned a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from Oberlin College in 1894. In 1900, she completed a library science course at Amherst College, studying under William I. Fletcher. She later attended summer courses at Columbia University. == Career and service ==

In the fall of 1900, Connecticut Agricultural College hired Whitney to manage the library and bookstore, then comprising two cramped rooms in Old Whitney Hall. She succeeded Jessie Spencer Bowen, who had served as the college's first librarian since 1897 and resigned when she got married. The library held only 8,127 volumes at the time. It lacked space, electricity, and a proper collection development budget, though the situation improved under presidents Charles L. Beach and George A. Works. On March 21, 1934, college president Charles C. McCracken asked her to retire, which she did effective July 1. She received numerous accolades at retirement. The faculty passed resolutions celebrating her thirty-four years of service, and the college granted her the status of emeritus librarian and the honorary degree of Master of Letters—the only honorary degree UConn awarded to staff during the first century of the institution's existence. The May 29, 1934 issue of the Connecticut Campus was dedicated to her. With thirty-four years of service, she was the longest-serving head librarian in the institution's history (the runner-up, John P. McDonald, served twenty years). Her hundredth birthday party in 1968 was attended by UConn president Homer D. Babbidge and provost emeritus Albert E. Waugh, who presented her with a plaque and a cake with 100 candles. She received official greetings from President Lyndon B. Johnson, Governor John Dempsey, and Oberlin College President Robert K. Carr. == Personal life ==

Whitney donated her diary spanning 1901 through 1952 to the Mansfield Historical Society in 1960. Her diary is filled with acerbic comments about students conversing or making out in the library, along with laments about long-winded faculty meetings and the couples-oriented college social scene. She never married or had children. Whitney died in her sleep at the age of 102 at the Natchaug Convalescent Hospital in Mansfield, where she had lived since 1962. She was interred in the family plot at Storrs Cemetery, on a hill overlooking the UConn campus. Her brief obituary in the Hartford Courant celebrated her as the "First Lady of Mansfield." == Legacy ==

Built in 1938, the Edwina Whitney Residence Hall on UConn's Storrs campus was named in Whitney's honor. of which she was a lifelong congregant and historian. Whitney Hall, named after her father, was the first major campus building. It was condemned in 1928 and demolished in 1932. ==References==