The Corner Family Part 2 – Whitney R. Corner, Garfield Cemetery, Pawnee County, Kansas

Whitney Robb Corner was the second child of Henry and Lucinda Corner. He was born in 1842 in Ohio. He enlisted in Co. L 1st OH Cavalry. Upon his discharge, his rank was corporal.

After the war, Whitney graduated from Iron City Commercial College at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The next three years found him in business with his father and brothers growing fruit in Ohio.

Like many other veterans of the Civil War, the idea of coming to Kansas was appealing. So, in 1871, he came to Anderson County. He bought a pony from an Indian and traveled westward to Abilene. Before he could claim any land, Whitney was struck with “fever and ague” (malaria) and returned to Ohio. Whitney married Rose Posey in 1873. Five sons were born to the couple with two dying before the age of five.

Whitney headed back to Kansas in 1877 bringing his wife, Rose, and three sons. They remained in Pawnee County for 11 years before Whitney decided to purchase a farm in Reno County. After a trip back to Ohio to care for his father-in-law and visiting sons in Hutchinson and California, Whitney and Rose returned to Pawnee County. Whitney died in 1911 at the age of 68. Rose passed away in 1936. Both are buried in Garfield Cemetery.

The rest of the story: Whitney’s “grandfather, Wm. Corner, came from England in 1795, being 9 weeks upon the stormy Atlantic in a sailing vessel. His grandmother, Sallie Maxon was born in one of the fort buildings of Campus Martius, (Marietta) on March 14, 1792, during Indian troubles. His great-grandfather, Henry Maxon, a Revolutionary soldier, was one of that sturdy band of pioneers, who descending the beautiful Ohio river on the Mayflower No. 2, landed on that historic day, April 7, 1788, at Marietta, Northwest Territory, now Marietta, Ohio. His father, Henry W. Corner, in 1852 crossed the country from Ohio to the Pacific walking the entire distance from St. Joseph, Mo, to Portland, Oregon.1

1Larned Chronoscope (Larned, Kansas) 19 Oct 1911, p. 6