Robert Whitaker was born in Lancashire, England in 1863. His family moved to Massachusetts in 1869. Whitaker attended Lawrence Academy and the Andover-Newton Theological School. He graduated in 1887 and married his first wife, Ellen Lingely, before spending a year as a missionary in Aguas Caliente, Mexico. He held Baptist pastorates in Seattle, Washington, and Salem, Oregon, before settling in Northern California in 1893 as the pastor of a church in Oakland. Ellen passed away in 1901, and in 1907 Whitaker married Claire Wall. He held a pastorate in Los Gatos from 1909-1921. Whitaker was also a politically active socialist and was arrested with Harold Story for protesting World War I. He was the editor of The Open Forum, the newsletter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles, from 1924-1926 and wrote frequently for a number of other socialist and/or Christian journals. He also spent decades campaigning for the release of Tom Mooney, who was convicted of carrying out the Preparedness Day bombing of 1916. From 1926 until his death in 1944, Whitaker taught and wrote prose and verse for religious and labor publications from his home in Los Gatos. His wife Claire outlived him, passing away in 1977 in Northern California.