essential to success.

Whitney died at age 59 of prostate cancer on January 8, 1825, in New Haven, Connecticut, leaving a widow and four children. During the course of his illness, he invented and constructed several devices to mechanically ease his pain. These devices, drawings of which are in his collected papers, were effective but were never manufactured for use of others due to his heirs' reluctance to trade in "indelicate" items.

At his death, his armory was left in the charge of his talented nephews, Eli Whitney Blake and Philos Blake, notable inventors and manufacturers in their own right (they invented the mortise lock and the stone-crushing machine).

Eli Whitney Blake (1820-1894) assumed control of the armory in 1841. Working under contract to inventor Samuel Colt, the younger Whitney manufactured the famous "Whitneyville Walker Colts" for the Texas Rangers. The success of this contract rescued Colt from financial ruin and enabled him to establish his own famous arms company. Whitney's marriage to Sarah Dalliba, daughter of the U.S. Army's chief of ordinance, helped to assure the continuing success of his business.

The younger Whitney organized the New Haven Water Company, which began operations in 1862. While this enterprise addressed the city's need for water, it also enabled Whitney to increase the amount of power available for his manufacturing operations at the expense of the water company's stockholders. A new dam made it possible to consolidate his operations—originally located in three sites along the Mill River—in a single plant. This dam still exists.

Whitney's grandson, Eli Whitney IV (1847-1924), sold the Whitney Armory to Winchester Repeating Arms, another notable New Haven gun company, in 1888. He served as president of the water company until his death and was a major New Haven business and civic leader. He played an important role in the development of New Haven's Ronan-Edgehill Neighborhood.

Following the closure of the armory, the factory site continued to be used for a variety of industrial purposes, including the water company. Many of the original armory buildings remained intact until the 1960s. In the 1970s, as part of the Bicentennial celebration, interested citizens organized the Eli Whitney Museum, which opened to the public in 1984. The site today includes the boarding house and barn that served Eli Whitney's original workers and a stone storage building from the original armory. Museum exhibits and programs are housed in a factory building constructed c. 1910. A water company office building constructed in the 1880s now houses educational programs operated by the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority (which succeeded the New Haven Water Company).

Eli Whitney and his descendants are buried in New Haven's historic Grove Street Cemetery.Yale College's Eli Whitney Students Program, which is one of the four doors into Yale College, is named after Whitney in recognition of his venerable age at the time of his entrance to Yale College in 1789; he was 23 years old. Eli Whitney is the great-great-grandfather of Eli Whitney Debevoise II, the current U.S. Executive Director of the World Bank Group.

Whitney was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1975.

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