Walter Whitman Walter Whitman was born in West Hills, Long Island, N.Y., on May 31, 1819, the second of six children. His father was a carpenter. Young Whitman tried many jobs. He was an office boy, printer, schoolteacher, reporter, and for a time the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle and other newspapers. At 30 he took a trip to New Orleans. He saw the vastness of his country for the first time, and he began to set down in poetry his impressions of the nation and its people. No publisher or author's name was on the first edition of 'Leaves of Grass' in 1855. Whitman printed it himself, and throughout his life he continued