Whitman spent his latter years in Camden, NJ and my maternal grandfather and his siblings were raised just a couple of blocks away from where he was living. My grandfather himself was too young to have met Whitman before he died but his oldest sister was a child while he still lived. She was told to stay well away from his home because he was a dirty old man.
Who knows the truth but that story has come down from people I know absolutely to have lived in his neighborhood during his life.