Francis C. Whiston (ca. 1799–1878), merchant and real-estate broker, was a native of Boston. During a brief residence in Fredericksburg he owned two slaves, but by 1821 he was back in Boston conducting a commission business. From 1823–24 Whiston attended medical lectures there, and in 1826 he joined the Boylston Medical Society. He was superintendent of the Boston reformatory in 1837 and a city assessor in 1847. Whiston’s avocations included Freemasonry, in which context he was present with Lafayette at the 1825 cornerstone laying for the city’s Bunker Hill monument, and membership in its Handel and Haydn Society. In 1870 he owned real estate valued at $12,000 and personal property worth $10,000 (DNA: RG 29, CS, Mass., Boston, 1810, 1830–70, Va., Fredericksburg, 1820; Boston Columbian Centinel, 19 Dec. 1821; Some Account of the Medical School in Boston, and of the Massachusetts General Hospital [Boston, 1824], 16; Catalogue of the Boylston Medical Society of Harvard University [1907], 43, 103; Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society, Annual Report 12 [1837]: 69; Municipal Register, containing Rules and Orders of The City Council, and a List of the Officers of the City of Boston for 1847 [1847], 76; Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the District of Columbia for the year 1875 [1876], 128–9; Charles C. Perkins and John S. Dwight, History of the Handel and Haydn Society, of Boston, Massachusetts [1883–93], 1:12, 94; Boston Daily Advertister, 18 Mar. 1878).