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British/American writer Herman Whitaker was born on 14 January, 1867, a son of James Whitaker, a wool merchant in Huddersfield, and his wife Annie Walton. Herman was the second to the youngest of seven children. James Whitaker may have died around the time of the birth of his seventh child for he is not listed in the 1870 census and his nineteen year old son is running the family wool business in Huddersfield. When Whitaker was sixteen he joined the British Army and served for three years with the 2nd battalion West Ridding regiment. There his prowess with a sword was such that he was chosen fencing master of the regiment. After
British/American writer Herman Whitaker was born on 14 January, 1867, a son of James Whitaker, a wool merchant in Huddersfield, and his wife Annie Walton. Herman was the second to the youngest of seven children. James Whitaker may have died around the time of the birth of his seventh child for he is not listed in the 1870 census and his nineteen year old son is running the family wool business in Huddersfield. When Whitaker was sixteen he joined the British Army and served for three years with the 2nd battalion West Ridding regiment. There his prowess with a sword was such that he was chosen fencing master of the regiment. After leaving the army he immigrated to Canada where he worked for the Hudson Bay Company and would later marry and start to raise a family.
By the late 1880s, Whitaker and his wife Margaret Vanderkar (or Vandercar) were operating a farm not far from Russell, Manitoba. There, the couple would go on to have six children, a seventh would come later in California.
In 1895 Whitaker abandoned what he considered a dark and desolate existence on the Canadian Prairie for a hopefully sunnier future in California. Later his book, "The Settler" (1906), chronicled the hardships faced by immigrant farming families battling the harsh elements while trying to deal with the then inflexible policies of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Unfortunately, Whitaker came to California during one of the worst economic depression in American history. To support his growing family he dug ditches, built barns and worked as a $12 a-week grocery store clerk in Oakland. Whitaker began his writing career at the age of 35 by submitting stories to the Overland Monthly and later Harper's Magazine. While these early stories did not earn him a great deal of money ($2.50 for his first), it did gain him acceptance into the growing Bay Area artist colony. Whitaker became close friends of writer Jack London, poet George Sterling and writer/activist Austin Lewis.
Over his career Whitaker authored some two hundred short stories for periodicals and a number of books, of which include: "The Probationer" (1905), "The Planter" (1909), "The Mystery of the Barranca" (1913), "Cross Trails: The Story of One Woman in the North Woods" (1914), "Over the Border: A Novel of Northern Mexico" (1916) and "Hunting the German Shark" (1919). Many of Whitaker's stories dealt with social injustice and were set in (but not exclusively), Canada and Mexico.
In the aftermath of the Great San Francisco Earthquake Whitaker opened up his large house in Piedmont to accommodate as many of his displaced friends as possible. One of these guests was Mexican/American artist Xavier Timoteo Martinez (1869-1943). Xavier soon fell in love with Whitaker's sixteen year old daughter, whom he had met earlier, and proposed the following year. Elsie Whitaker accepted despite the fact that Xavier was twice her age and only two years younger than her father and that she'd already agreed to at least four other wedding proposals. Elsie, who George Sterling once called, "the Blessed Damozel, was already considered a "free-spirited artist". Xavier and Elsie married in the fall of 1907 and stayed together until his death in 1943.
Another house guest during that time was F. L. Bassett, a local musician, and his wife Alyce Hunt Bassett. Not long after the Bassett's marriage dissolved, Whitaker became involved with Alyce, who was only a year or so older than his eldest son. The following year, on 11 August, 1907, the couple married in San Francisco. Whitaker first wife, Margaret, may have passed away some time earlier, since all her younger children were living with their father and new bride by the time of the 1910 census.
On 10 December, 1913, Whitaker became a Naturalized United States citizen. He meant to have become a citizen much earlier but found cutting his ties with Britain difficult.
Whitaker became friends with General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing during his Punitive Expedition into Mexico following Poncho Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico, even though he thought the American policy there was a "horrible blunder". Considered an authority on Mexico, Whitaker was working there as a correspondent for the Oakland Tribune. While in Mexico he got the opportunity to meet and be photographed with Poncho Villa.
When the United States entered World War One Whitaker became the Tribune's war correspondent with the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe. Though over fifty he followed the troops everywhere, he felt the affects of mustard gas while going over the top during trench warfare, flew in sea planes, was onboard destroyers as they searched for German submarines off the coast of Northern France and minesweepers as they attempted to clear the sea lanes and even went down in an allied submarine. His book, "Hunting the German Shark", is based on his observations of Allied anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic. Once while aboard the United States destroyer Cummings, he thought one of the sailors look familiar to him and as the young man walked by Whitaker turned and said: "Hello son". Percy Whitaker, who was a Gunner's Mate on the Cummings, had no idea his father was aboard nor did his father know that his son served on that destroyer.
While still on assignment in Paris, Whitaker became seriously ill with a stomach ailment. Thinking it might be appendicitis he made the decision to return home to the Unites States for an operation. Herman Whitaker died on 20 January, 1919, of stomach cancer one week after having abdominal surgery at St. Luke's Hospital in New York. He was survived by his second wife, two daughters and five sons. His ashes were scattered on Round Top, an extinct volcano that dominates the Oakland skyline.
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