The Whiteside family of Champlain originates from Cambridge, New York. Thomas Whiteside came to Champlain and established a store on Main Street. In 1815, he married Pliny Moore’s daughter Sophia and built a large brick mansion which still stands on Oak Street. This house is considered the second oldest house in the village of Champlain (after the stone farm house on Prospect St. built by Pliny Moore in 1808). Thomas grew and manufactured flax which he processed in his mills. This business was important as his children and grandchildren continued the family business in various forms into the early 1900s.
Thomas Whiteside had two sons named John Henry Whiteside and Alexander Whiteside. He also had several daughters. John and Alexander continued their father’s business and expanded it with the building of a paper mill on the Great Chazy River in Perry’s Mills. John and Alexander’s children and grandchildren continued the business but some of the family and their descendants moved to Boston and Connecticut. Although the last of the Champlain Whitesides died in the 1930s, most of the family and their descendants are buried in a very large Whiteside plot in Glenwood Cemetery. The Whitesides are related to Pliny Moore who was the founder of Champlain.
In the late 1850s, John Henry Whiteside donated undeveloped village land that became the Glenwood Cemetery. He worked with an architect to lay out the burial ground as a garden cemetery which was popular at the time.
Credit: Google Books. Genealogical and Family History of Northern New York: A Record of the Achievements of Her People in the Making of a Commonwealth and the Founding of a Nation, Volume 1. William Richard Cutter, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1910. Page 127.