Amiel Weeks Whipple | |
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Amiel Weeks Whipple
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Born |
Greenwich, Massachusetts |
October 15, 1818
Died | May 7, 1863 Washington, D.C. |
(aged 44)
Place of burial | Proprietors' Cemetery, Portsmouth, New Hampshire |
Allegiance |
United States of America Union |
Service/branch |
United States Army Union Army |
Years of service | 1841–1863 |
Rank | Major General |
Battles/wars | American Civil War |
Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple (October 15, 1818 – May 7, 1863) was an American military engineer and surveyor. He served as a brigadier general in the American Civil War, where he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville. He was the topographical engineer/surveyor in charge of the 1853-1854 Pacific Railroad Survey from Arkansas to Los Angeles in 1853 and 1854, for a potential transcontinental railroad route.
His name is memorialized on 2 forts — Fort Whipple, the Arizona Territory's first capital, and Fort Whipple, Arlington County, Virginia, now Fort Myer. — and around northern Arizona: Whipple Street, Whipple Stage, Whipple Mountains, Whipple Mountains Wilderness. Numerous plants taxa were named in his honor, including the genus Whipplea and species Hesperoyucca whipplei.
Whipple was born to David and Abigail Brown Pepper Whipple in Greenwich, Massachusetts. He attended Amherst College and West Point, graduating in the Class of 1841. His early career including surveying the Patapsco River, sounding and mapping the approaches to New Orleans, surveying Portsmouth Harbor, and, as a lieutenant, helping to determine portions of the United States' borders with Canada and Mexico.