He came of a race of fighters. The family is found towards the end of the fifteenth century in Oxfordshire, at Goring and Whitechurch on the Thames; one branch was connected with the Websters of Battle-Abbey, and descendants still live in the vicinity; another branch is in Essex, and from this sprang Dr. Daniel Whistler, President of the College of Physicians in London in the time of Charles the Second, and described as “a quaint gentleman of rare humor,” and frequently mentioned in “Pepys’s Diary.”
From the Oxfordshire branch, one Ralph, a son of Hugh Whistler of Goring, went to Ireland and founded the Irish branch from which sprang Major John Whistler, the first representative of the family in America, and grandfather of the painter.
Major Whistler was a British soldier under Burgoyne, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Saratoga. At the close of the war he returned to England and made a runaway match with the daughter of a Sir Edward Bishop.
Returning to this country with his wife, he settled at Hagerstown, Maryland, and soon after enlisted in the American army.
“He was made a sergeant-major in a regiment that was called ‘the infantry regiment.’ Afterwards he was adjutant of Garther’s regiment of the levies of 1791, which brought him into General St. Glair’s command. He was severely wounded November 4, 1791, in a battle with the Indians on the Miami River. In 1792 ‘the regiment of infantry’ was, by Act of Congress, designated as the ‘First Regiment,’ and to this John Whistler was assigned as first lieutenant. In November, 1796, he was promoted to the adjutancy, and in July, 1797, he was commissioned a captain.”
While captain of the “First Regiment,” then stationed at Detroit, he was, in 1803, ordered to proceed to the present site of the city of Chicago and construct Fort Dearborn.
He and his command arrived on August 17, at two o’clock in the afternoon, and at once staked out the ground and began the erection of palisades for protection against the Indians.
The captain had with him at the time one son, William, who was a lieutenant in the army, and who was commander of Fort Dearborn in 1833, when the fort was finally abandoned as a military post. Another son, John, remained in the East.
On the completion of the fort the captain brought out the remaining members of his family,—his wife, five daughters, and his third son, George, then but three years old, and afterwards the father of the artist.
“The daughters were Sarah, who married James Abbott, of Detroit,—the ceremony took place in the fort, shortly after the family came; the wedding-trip was made to Detroit on horseback, over an Indian trail and the old territorial road; they had two nights of camping out; their effects were carried on pack-horses,—Ann, married Major Marsh, of the army; Catherine, married Major Hamilton, of the army; Harriet, married Captain Phelan, also of the army; Caroline—eight months old when her father built Fort Dearborn—was married in Detroit, in 1840, to William R. Wood, of Sandwich, Georgia.”