George Washington Whistler

George Washington Whistler (1800 –1849) was a prominent American civil engineer in the first half of the 19th century. He was a steam locomotive builder whose shop produced the first steam locomotives in the United States known to have been equipped with whistles. In 1842, he was engaged by the Russian government as a consulting engineer for the Saint Petersburg – Moscow Railway, the first large-scale implementation of railroad transportation in Russia. The railway line, as planned was 644 km long and built between 1842 and 1851. One of Whistler's important influences was the introduction of the Howe truss for the Russian railroad's bridges. This inspired the renowned Russian engineer Dmitrii Ivanovich Zhuravskii (1821–1891) to perform studies and develop structural analysis techniques for Howe truss bridges.
He was the father of James McNeill Whistler, the famous American artist.Whistler's Mother, a portrait of Anna Whistler (his second wife), by their son, James McNeill Whistler, is among the most famous paintings in American art.

George Washington Whistler was born on May 19, 1800 at the military outpost of Fort Wayne which his father, Major John Whistler (1756–1829) was commandant and his wife, Anna Bishop. Ft. Wayne at that time was a part of the great Northwest Territory. His father, John Whistler, had been a British soldier under General Burgoyne at the battles of Saratoga in the revolutionary war, later to enlist in American service.
George Washington Whistler married his first wife, Mary Roberdeau Swift, (1804–1827) and they had three children, George William (1822–1869), Deborah Delano (1825–1908) and Joseph Swift (1824–1840). However, Mary Roberdeau Swift died at a young age in 1827. Whistler then married the sister of his close friend William Gibbs McNeill (1801–1853), Anna Mathilda McNeill (1804–1881), with whom he had five sons: James Abbott McNeill Whistler, William McNeill Whistler (1836–1900), Kirk Boott (1838–1842) named after Kirk Boott, Charles Donald Whistler (1841–1843), and John Bouttatz Whistler (1845–1846), named after Whistler's Russian engineer friend Major Ivan F. Bouttatz.

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