Whitney, Eli. Inventor. Born in Westborough, MA, December 8, 1765. In 1792 he was graduated at Yale, went to Georgia, and for a time read law, while living on the plantation of the widow of General Nathanael Greene. Here he invented the cotton gin, but owing to litigation growing out of the claims of fraudulent imitators, and despairing of obtaining his rights in the South, Whitney went to New Haven, CT, in 1798, where he became engaged in the manufacture of firearms, introducing the extension of machinery in place of manual labor. Eli Whitney died at New Haven, CT, 1825.

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