Whitney Made: The Man behind a Valentine Empire

By Chad Sirois, Communications Manager

“Industry, punctuality and Christianity” was the motto of the man who would make Worcester the heart of the American valentine-making industry. While many would credit this to Esther Howland, the mother of the American valentine, it was actually the work and perseverance of George C. Whitney that would bring about Worcester’s prominence.

Born in 1842, George Clarkson Whitney was the youngest of the three Whitney boys, his older brothers being Edward Whitney (1834-1897) and Sumner Allen Whitney (1824-1861). His parents died while he was still a boy and it is most likely that Sumner, already 20 when Whitney was born, stood in as guardian. Living in Worcester as a young boy, he attended Worcester Academy. At the age of 19, he enlisted in the Union Army as a private in the 51^st Regiment. He served as clerk in the Provost Marshall’s Office under Major Harkness at Beaufort, North Carolina.

Upon returning from the war, Whitney entered into business with his brother Sumner, who owned a wholesale stationary store. Sumner and his wife were also hand-crafting valentines as a sideline. The trauma of the Civil War had led to a surge in sentimentality, and valentines provided the perfect medium to express ones feelings. The industry surged.  After Sumner’s death, George renamed the business The Whitney Valentine Company and he began to quickly buy up his competitors in the region.

Before 1888, Whitney had bought out at least 10 competitors, most importantly Esther Howland and Jotham Taft’s New England Valentine Company. He purchased the New York firms of Berlin and Jones, the city’s largest manufacturer of valentines,  and  A.J. Fisher Company.  A.J. Fisher dealt in a comic, or vinegar, valentines. Whitney did not believe in “using love’s gifts as a medium for ridicule,” and did not use many of Fisher’s plates for his own company’s printing.

Whitney also added other holiday cards to his business, such as Christmas, Halloween, New Year’s and Easter. He began printing calendars, books, and booklets. In 1898, the company moved to larger quarters on Union Street.  The business was incorporated as the George C. Whitney Company. Even with a destructive fire in 1910, by 1915 Worcester Magazine assessed that “ninety per cent of the valentines that are exchanged on St. Valentine’s Day come from Worcester.” In April of 1915, George C. Whitney died. He was eulogized not just for his commercial endeavors, but for his philanthropic work with the Y.M.C.A., the Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, and other religious charitable organizations.

The company continued to thrive, run by Whitney’s son Warren and later his grandson George. Even with it’s success the business couldn’t withstand the paper shortage of WWII. With the company unable to re-purpose their machinery for the war effort, the largest Valentine manufacturer in America closed its doors. The Telegram & Gazette mused in retrospect:

Today in 1942, [March 1] a tear drop touched all valentines. The George C. Whitney Co., 67 Union Street, the largest and oldest manufacturer of valentines in the world, announced it would voluntarily liquidate its business.