Stephen Remington Whitney was born on February 5, 1837, in Woodbridge, New Jersey, to Oliver and Rachel Whitney. His father was a farmer. Whitney grew up and attended school in Woodbridge, and by the early 1860s, he was working as a farmer.
He enlisted in the Union army on August 4, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company C of the 7th New York Heavy Artillery two weeks later. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 10 inches tall, with brown hair and gray eyes. He denounced the Confederate “rebellion” and the “blasting curse of slavery.”
He remained devoted to the Union, writing that Virginia’s soil was “dotted with little hillocks that mark the last resting place of some patriots who have sacrificed their lives on the Altar of Our Country. If the soil of Virginia was sacred before the rebellion it is doubly so now for it has been baptized with the blood of heroes and patriots.” The regiment took part in the Overland Campaign and the siege of Petersburg. He supported Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1864, urging friends back home to “support Lincoln & Johnson if they want the war to end soon, and honorably to the Nation.” He mustered out on June 16, 1865.
He settled in Galway, New York, after the war and married Orcelia Mosher. They moved to Black Creek, Missouri, in the late 1860s, and their son Edwin was born there around 1869. By 1870, Whitney was working as a grocer, and he owned $400 of real estate and $700 of personal property. His wife died in the early 1870s, and he married Melissa Howard on May 21, 1872. They had at least four children: Howard, born around 1875; Sarah, born around 1879; George, born around 1881; and Frank, born around 1885. He applied for a federal pension in February 1879 and eventually secured one.
They moved to Republican, Nebraska, in the early 1870s. By 1880, Whitney was working as a real estate agent. They moved to Washington, D.C., in the early 1880s, and he earned a living as a government clerk. He died on May 8, 1924.