Eli Whitney died of prostate cancer

It is a fact that Eli Whitney died of prostate cancer. His 1817 marriage to Henrietta Edwards, granddaughter of the famous evangelist Jonathan Edwards, daughter of Pierpont Edwards, head of the Democratic Party in Connecticut, and first cousin of Yale's president, Timothy Dwight, the state's leading Federalist, cemented him as a member of Connecticut's ruling elite. Such relationships were critical to success in a corporation that relied on government contracts.

Whitney died of prostate cancer on January 8, 1825, just a month after his 59th birthday, in New Haven, Connecticut. He left behind a widow and four children. Eli Whitney III (also known as Eli Whitney Jr.) was one of his descendants who were crucial in the construction of New Haven, Connecticut's waterworks. During his sickness, he allegedly devised and built many devices to mechanically relieve his agony. The Eli Whitney Students Program, Yale University's admissions program for non-traditional students, is named after Whitney, who began his studies there at the age of 23 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in three years.

According to Robert, Whitney was buried in New Haven, Connecticut's Grove Street Cemetery. On the grounds of the old Mulberry Grove plantation in Port Wentworth, Georgia, the foundation of the structure where his first operational cotton gin was installed still stands. The most obvious memorial to Whitney's memory, however, is located in Hamden, Connecticut, where the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop has preserved the remains of his pioneering musket factory hamlet on the Mill River.