In the midst of shaking the Mather family tree for Civil War participants, we were confronted with a most unexpected, offbeat, somewhat whimsical, and apparently, Wikipedia-worthy individual.
William Street Hutchings was the son of Jane Street and John Hutchings, and the grandson of Clara Mather and Samuel Street. William was born in Manhattan in 1832. This from Wikipedia…
William Street Hutchings, (January 7, 1832 - August 25, 1911) also known as Professor Hutchings and the Lightning Calculator, was a 19th-century math prodigy and mental calculator who P. T. Barnum first billed as the "Boy Lightning Calculator". He later worked as a sideshow barker and wrote a book called The Lightning Calculator…”
As the Brooklyn Eagle reported with William’s obituary in 1911…
“Professor William Street Hutchings, "the lightning calculator," for fifty years famous in the show world of the United States, died yesterday, at his home, 8 Bulfinch Street, Boston, aged 80 years. He was born on Forsyth Street, Manhattan, January 7, 1832, his father being a grocer. He first practiced law, then became an actor and afterward a farmer. In 1860 he went into Barnum's Museum as a lightning calculator, remaining until the museum burned down the second time. He then went on the road and in 1872 gave a private entertainment to President Grant, in the White House. In 1883, he went with Austin & Stone's museum in Boston, and was with them at his death. He claimed to have given 30,000 lectures to 80,000,000 people.”
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