Edward Douglass White - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

White was born on his parents' plantation near the town of Thibodeauxville (now Thibodaux) in Lafourche Parish in south Louisiana. He was the son of Edward Douglass White, Sr., a former governor of Louisiana, and grandson of Dr. James White, a U.S. representative, physician, and judge. On his mother's side, he was the grandson of U.S. Marshal Tench Ringgold, and related to the Lee family of Virginia. The White family's large plantation cultivated sugar cane and refined it into a finished product.

White's paternal ancestors were of Irish descent, and he was a devout Roman Catholic his entire life. He studied first at the Jesuit College in New Orleans, then at Mount St. Mary’s College, near Emmitsburg, Maryland, and then attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. where he was a member of the Philodemic Society. He later studied law at the University of Louisiana.

Read more about this topic:  Edward Douglass White

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:

    “In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
    —M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)

    “I am heartily tired of this life of bondage, responsibility, and toil. I wish it was at an end.... We are both physically very healthy.... Our tempers are cheerful. We are social and popular. But it is one of our greatest comforts that the pledge not to take a second term relieves us from considering it. That was a lucky thing. It is a reform—or rather a precedent for a reform, which will be valuable.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    “There are words in that letter to his wife, respecting the education of his daughters, which deserve to be framed and hung over every mantelpiece in the land. Compare this earnest wisdom with that of Poor Richard.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)