Elisha Whittlesey, already an attorney in Connecticut, emigrated with Polly Mygatt Whittlesey from Danbury to Canfield in the Western Reserve in June 1806, where he was admitted to the Ohio bar, served as prosecuting attorney from 1807 to 1823, opened a law office in 1813, specialized in land cases, and was one of the founders of Norwalk, Ohio, in 1815. During the War of 1812, he was adjutant to Maj. Gen. Elijah Wadsworth and later a secretary to Gen. William Henry Harrison. Elected in 1820 to the first of two terms in the Ohio General Assembly, he then served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1823 to 1838 for Trumbull, Portage, Geauga, and Ashtabula Counties, where he earned the nickname “Watchdog of the Treasury,” led Ohio’s delegation, and established the Whig party in the state. President William Henry Harrison appointed him auditor of the U.S. Post Office’s treasury in 1841, a post he resigned in 1843, and he later served as First Comptroller of the Treasury from 1849 to 1857 under Presidents Taylor, Fillmore, and Pierce and again from 1861 to 1863 under Lincoln. Active in the American Colonization Society from the 1820s to 1863, he also helped found the Mahoning County Agricultural Society in 1847 and served as general agent and later president of the Washington National Monument Association. He died in office in Washington, D.C., and his body was accompanied to Canfield for burial by a wreath from First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.
