The Rev. Rose Fuller Whistler, in his _Annals of an English Family_ (1887), says that John le Wistler de Westhannye (1272-1307) was the founder of the family. Most of the Whistlers lived in Goring, Whitchurch, or Oxford, and are buried in many a church and churchyard of the Thames Valley. Brasses and tablets to the memory of several are in the church of St. Mary at Goring: one to "Hugh Whistler, the son of Master John Whistler of Goring, who departed this life the 17 Day of Januarie Anno Dominie 1675 being aged 216 years"--an amazing statement, but there it is in the parish church durable as brass can make it, and it would have delighted Whistler. The solemn antiquary, however, has decided that the 21 is only a badly cut 4. This remarkable ancestor figures as a family ghost at Gatehampton, where he is said to have been buried with his money, and there he still walks, guarding the treasure he lived so many years to gather. The position of the Whistlers entitled them to a coat of arms, described in the Harleian MSS., No. 1556, and thus in _Gwillim's Heraldry_: "Gules, five mascles, in bend between two Talbots passant argent"; and the motto "Forward." The men were mostly soldiers and parsons. A few made names for themselves. The shield of Gabriel Whistler, of Combe, Sussex, is one of six in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. Anthony Whistler, poet, friend of Shenstone, belonged to the Whitchurch family. Dr. Daniel Whistler (1619-1684), of the Essex branch, was a Fellow of Merton, an original Fellow of the Royal Society, a member and afterwards President of the College of Physicians, friend of Evelyn and Pepys. Evelyn often met him in "select companie" at supper, and once "Din'd at Dr. Whistler's at the Physicians Colledge," and found him not only learned but "the most facetious man in nature," the legitimate ancestor of Whistler. Pepys, who also dined and supped with him many times, pronounced him "good company and a very ingenious man." He fell under a cloud with the officials of the College of Physicians, and his portrait has been consigned to a back stairway of the Hall in Pall Mall. In the seventeenth century Ralph Whistler, of the Salters' Company, London, was one of the colonisers of Ulster, and Francis Whistler was a settler of Virginia. When Whistler saw the name "Francis Whistler, Gentleman," in the _Genesis of the United States_, he said to us, "There is an ancestor, with the hall-mark F.F.V. [First Families of Virginia], who tickles my American snobbery, and washes out the taint of Lowell."