This is an annotated version of the original newspaper biography of Mary Ann Hatten White, which originally, and incorrectly, spelled her maiden name as Hatton. The added information is in [brackets]. Submitted by Find A Grave contributor David Aspelin.
French, Laura M. “A biography [of William Allen White’s mother, Mary Ann Hatten White].” The Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, 7 May 1924, p. 4.
A Biography
by “L. M. F.” [Laura M. French]
The following biography of Mrs. [Mary Ann Hatten] White was written by her friend, Miss Laura M. French, to whom she told her life’s story in the course of a twenty-five-year friendly intimacy.
Mary Ann [Hatten] White was born near Quebec, [Upper] Canada, on January 3, 1830. Her parents were Frank [Hatten] and Annie Kelly, both of whom were born in Ireland. Theirs was a romantic courtship and marriage. Fearing the opposition of their parents, they eloped, were married in a little church, which is still standing at Longford, Ireland, and sailed from Liverpool for Canada.
They had little money after their passage was paid, and nothing with which to start a home in a new and strange country. They took up land in the primeval forest, and there made themselves a home. No work could be had in this immediate neighborhood, that paid real money, so the young husband sought and found work at his trade, that of a stone-mason, in Quebec. This left the young wife alone much of the time, and her nearest neighbor lived a mile distant. There were bears and wildcats and other beasts in the forest, and her days and nights often were filled with fears for her life. The Indians, too, were frequent visitors and them she feared almost as much as she did the wild beasts. The Indians really were friendly, and called her a “brave squaw,” for she hid her fear of them, asked them to sit by her fireside, and tried to be kind to them. Here, in a log cabin, Mary Ann [Hatten] was born, and lived during her early childhood. She was a “bottle baby” and the girl mother was forced to leave her child alone in the cabin while she walked the mile through the forest to the nearest neighbor’s home for milk, when the father was absent from home. Always she feared for the child’s safety, and always she was frightened for herself, but she never thought of staying at home because of her fears.
The [Hatten] family moved to Oswego, N.Y., when the little Mary Ann was a sizable child [probably about 1836], and after the birth of two other children. Her most-distinct recollection of [her family] was [how they crossed] the [frozen] St. Lawrence [River. Her father and mother, and their three children, [merely drove across it,] in a light buggy. Her childish heart was grieved when the little dog, “Nigger,” which they were taking to the new home, escaped and was drowned when it fell through a hole in the ice.
In Oswego, Mr. [Hatten] built many of the business houses of that day, and the lighthouse, which he erected [while he was] a contractor on Lake Erie, still stands. He lived but a few years after coming to Oswego [he probably died about 1840], however, and Mrs. [Ann Hatten] died when her daughter, Mary Ann, was 16 [in 1846].
Following her mother’s death [in 1846], the young girl went to live with the family of Mr. and Mrs. Robert [and Eliza] Wright, who had been close friends of her parents. She learned the dressmaking trade and became self-supporting.
The Wrights moved to Chicago [probably about 1854], and then offered her a home with them if she would come to Chicago. She accepted their offer, and here came the opportunity for the schooling for which she had longed. The Wrights were ardent Congregationalists, and soon became interested in Knox College, at Galesburg, Illinois, and Miss [Hatten] became a student in that institution. Soon, the Wrights felt the lure of Kansas [Territory], and [in 1860] came further west, to [the territory’s town of] Council Grove.
Mr. Wright’s business partner, Mr. Temple, was also interested in Knox College. He had moved to Council Grove [in 1857 or 1858], but before going, he built a cottage in Galesburg in which his sister-in-law and Miss [Hatten] lived and looked after his three motherless boys, whom he wished to educate in Galesburg. This was a happy arrangement, and by it, Miss [Hatten] was enabled to fit herself for teaching.
She came to Council Grove [Kansas, on Saturday, 21 January] 1865, and taught school in that town and [then in nearby] Cottonwood Falls. She secured the spring term in Council Grove in 1865—the year of the closing of the Civil War, when race prejudice was strong and when colored people met many rebuffs, even in abolition Kansas.
“I got into trouble my first Sunday [22 January 1865] in Council Grove,” said Mrs. White, in relating the story, “I went with the Wrights to the Congregational Sunday school and was asked to teach a class of little girls, which of course, I did. One especially bright little dark-skinned [octoroon] girl attracted me, and it did not occur to me that she was a colored child, though among Congregationalists that would have made no difference. I told all the little girls I hoped that I would see them at school the next day, and added a special invitation to the little girl to whom I had been attracted. I told all about my experiences at dinner, and the Wrights said I’d sure enough put my foot into it now, as that little girl was a colored child, and no colored child was allowed to go to school in Council Grove. I said I was perfectly willing to teach a colored child, and I was going to do it if I could.
“News of my inviting a ‘nigger’ to come to school had spread, and the next morning [on Monday, 23 January 1865,] when I went to the schoolhouse [the Union Schoolhouse, which the townspeople later nicknamed the “Little Brown Jug”], there was an air of excitement among the children, and they stood around in groups, whispering. The big bell had been taken away by a member of the school board, but I called the children together with the little bell I carried with me—and by the way, that little bell is still in my possession—and I gave the little colored girl a seat. A pretty, white girl asked to sit by her, which I allowed her to do.
Just then came a knock at the door. ‘I want to talk to you—come outside,’ a man said to me.
‘No, come in,’ I said.
‘There’s not much talking to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to put out that damned nigger—show her to me.’
I refused, and he couldn’t pick her out among the other children He was chagrined when he found his own child was sitting by the ‘nigger.’
Other members of the board then came, and several of the [students’] parents; and, by the end of the first recess, my school of 70 pupils had dwindled down to 20, as they took their children home. The primary teacher also declared that she ‘didn’t come there to teach niggers.’ So she, too, went home, after I told her she’d teach them if she taught with me. Her friends made up a purse for her, and she never came back. One of the larger girls [then] taught the primary children.
“But that wasn’t the end of my troubles. The next morning [on Tuesday, 24 January 1865], I found the windows of the school nailed down and the front door locked. I called on Mr. [Robert] Wright, who was a member of the board, to help me out. He opened the door and rang the bell, and we had school that day, but it was a light attendance.
“That night [on Tuesday, 24 January 1865], the pro-slavery people held an indignation meeting. Mr. Wright asked to be allowed to talk, and he introduced the late [Colonel Samuel Newitt] Wood, of Cottonwood Falls. [To learn more about Samuel Newitt Wood, visit his Find-A-Grave page.] Wood was on my side, all right, but he jollied the other side, and said of course they didn’t want to send their children to school with ‘niggers.’ The ‘niggers’ might get ahead of the white children in their studies and that would be embarrassing. He kept the crowd in good humor, and talked for two hours about everything under the sun, and when he sat down it was time to go home, and the indignation meeting was a fizzle.
“Sentiment was so strong, however, that it seemed best for me not to urge the colored children to come to school. But I went out among the people, and told them that, if the colored children couldn’t come peaceably to school, the board had to provide a school for them, and I nagged them till they did it. They rented a room, hired another woman to teach the colored children, and that was the start of the school for the colored children in Council Grove. I’ve always been proud of the fight I made. I visited the school many years later, and the children knew the story, and they gave me a grand welcome.”
The next year [in 1866,] Miss [Hatten] taught at Cottonwood Falls [while she boarded in Samuel Newitt and Margaret Lyon Wood’s home, which is located about a mile east of the falls and is now on the National Register of Historic Places] and then she again planned to attend the Normal School in Emporia. She came here [Emporia], and, before she had found a place to board, she received news of the serious sickness of her sister, in [Lapeer], Michigan, and she went there to spend the winter. She was married there, in April 1867, to Dr. Allen White, of Emporia.
The Whites came immediately to Emporia, to their home in what was known for many years as the [S. B.] Riggs property, at the corner of Seventh and Merchant [Streets]. Here, on their arrival, they found that the late Mrs. Elizabeth Storrs had prepared dinner for them. Following the dinner, Hall’s Cornet band serenaded them, and their homecoming was pleasant, indeed.
In this house, her only living child, [William Allen] White, was born, on February 10, 1868.
“Will was a puny baby,” said his mother, “and that first summer was hot and dry. He needed to be outdoors, but the heat kept us indoors all day. I used to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning, just as daylight was coming, and take him out in his little buggy. Then, late at night, I would give him another airing. We had a hard time to pull him thru that first summer. We moved to El Dorado by the time he was a year old [in 1869], and the change seemed to do him good, as he was a healthy, hearty child ever afterward.”
Mrs. White lived 20 years in El Dorado [until about 1889], and there, in 1882, Dr. [Allen] White died. He was engaged in the general mercantile business for a time, and later became proprietor of a drug store. He was a man of strong character, and impressed on his son many of his habits of mind and thought. He wished his son might not become addicted to the use of tobacco. “Don’t smoke till you’re 21, son,” he said, “and when you are of age I’ll give you a gold watch and chain.” The son’s promise was given, and kept—and has been kept ever since.
Doctor White wished his son to be able to choose between good and evil, but he was wise enough to know that preaching wouldn’t impress him. So, when Doctor White discovered that his son and a bunch of neighborhood boys were playing cards surreptitiously in the White’s barn loft, he laid his plans accordingly. One hot, sweltering Sunday afternoon, he poked his head through the opening above the ladder that led to the haymow and discovered “the gang” at a card game.
“Why boys,” “Old Doc White” exclaimed, “It’s too hot to play cards in this loft. Come right down and go out on the front porch and play.” They demurred, but “Old Doc” was persistent.
“Why come on,” he coaxed. “It’s too hot here for any use, with all that nice cool front porch going to waste. I can’t allow you to stay here. It’ll make you sick. Come on now, and I’ll ask Mother to make you some lemonade.”
The boys unwillingly descended, and followed “Old Doc” to the front porch, where he brought out chairs for them, and where Mrs. White soon appeared with a pitcher of lemonade. The boys enjoyed the lemonade, but somehow the game had lost its flavor. People passing on the sidewalk looked askance at the boys, as they were playing cards on the White’s front porch on Sunday afternoon, and their scrutiny and their plainly audible remarks made the boys uncomfortable. The game soon broke up, and the boys said they must go home. “Now don’t hurry, boys,” said “Old Doc,” “just stay as long as you want to, and come any afternoon and play cards right here on this porch. I want you to have a good time, and it’s a whole lot more fun here than is a hot, stuffy hay-mow. Come whenever you feel like it, and there’ll always be a pitcher of lemonade on tap.”
The boys came a few times, but the card games languished, and soon they turned their attention elsewhere. With the element of secrecy and stolen delights gone, and without knowing it, the boys were switched off from what might have become a dangerous fondness for cards. Probably all of the boys play cards, as men, but the game never attained great fascination for them.
After their son had completed the work of the El Dorado High School and had had a year’s work in the College of Emporia [probably by 1889—as mentioned above], Mrs. White moved with him to Lawrence, that she might be with him during his work at the University of Kansas. Then, when W. A. White went to Kansas City to take up newspaper work [first, with the Kansas City Journal, and then with the Kansas City Star], she went with him, and lived [there] until she came, with Mr. and Mrs. [William Allen and Sallie Moss Lindsay] White, to Emporia, in 1895. This town ever since has been her home.
In 1904, she built a home on the lot adjoining the W. A. White home on the south, and here she had lived happily, interested always in the world and its happenings, and deeply devoted to her son and his family. Her two grandchildren, Bill and Mary White, were her joy and pride. She was a famous cook, and loved to surprise the family, with whom she took most of her meals until she was no longer able to leave her home, with a favorite dish or a plate of doughnuts or a pie or a pudding of which she knew they were especially fond. She was a fountain of physical and mental energy at an age when many women have laid aside all exertion, and she maintained an independence of action remarkable in one of her years. She read widely during all of her life, and was always informed on the topics of the day.
Mrs. White, during her long life, had seen and been a part of the most remarkable advance in civilization the world has known. She saw the first railroad come into Oswego, New York. She heard the first woman preacher that ever occupied a pulpit in that city, and often she heard Susan B. Anthony speak [probably including Council Grove, Kansas, in October 1867, when Samuel Newitt Wood brought Susan B. Anthony to the state during his women’s-suffrage campaign]. Hooting, hissing crowds followed the early suffrage advocates, and often had eggs and stones thrown at them. Once, following a temperance address, a dozen girls started to pull down the Oswego saloon, but the move was stopped. Mrs. White was one of this group. She signed a temperance pledge and was an ardent advocate of prohibition. She saw Mormonism and Spiritualism rise and fall in Oswego and she learned the dressmaking trade there by hand. In Galesburg [in 1861], she went with the crowd to cheer the boys when they started to the Civil War, and wept because she had no one to send. She said her grief was as real as if she had been parting with [her] father or brother, instead of rejoicing that she had “escaped” the sorrow of such parting. In Galesburg [on 7 October 1858], she heard [the fifth debate between Abraham] Lincoln and [Stephen A.] Douglas, and recalled the excitement when [Rev. Elijah Parish] Lovejoy, the first martyr in the cause of freeing the slaves, was killed [on 7 November 1837, in Alton, Illinois]. She was personally acquainted with Mother [Mary Ann] Bickerdyke, the Civil War nurse, whose home was at Galesburg.
Mrs. White lived through four wars in which the United States was involved—the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American [War], and the Great War [World War I]. She had seen the advent of the sewing machine, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, the undersea cables, electricity, the automobile, wireless [i.e., radio broadcasting], telegraphy, and the airship—perhaps a greater progress in civilization than any other period.
In 1909, at age 79, with Mr. and Mrs. [William Allen] White and their children, she made a five-months trip to Europe and enjoyed it, perhaps more than any other member of the party. With her son, she went to Ireland, where she saw the church in which her mother and father were married, the record of their marriage, and the house in which her mother was born. She rode in an Irish jaunting cart from Dublin to the town in which her father was born, and saw an Irish country town fair on a Saturday. She could trace no relatives, however, as all of her mother’s family had died of cholera in Dublin many years ago. The poverty of the Irish peasants appealed to the sympathies of Mrs. White, and she was grieved that she could not help them to better ways of living. Always her sympathies were with the needy and the suffering, but to the people of her parents’ nativity her heart was especially tender.
L. M. F. [Laura M. French]
French, Laura M. “A biography [of William Allen White’s mother, Mary Ann Hatten White].” The Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, 7 May 1924, p. 4.
A Biography
by “L. M. F.” [Laura M. French]
The following biography of Mrs. [Mary Ann Hatten] White was written by her friend, Miss Laura M. French, to whom she told her life’s story in the course of a twenty-five-year friendly intimacy.
Mary Ann [Hatten] White was born near Quebec, [Upper] Canada, on January 3, 1830. Her parents were Frank [Hatten] and Annie Kelly, both of whom were born in Ireland. Theirs was a romantic courtship and marriage. Fearing the opposition of their parents, they eloped, were married in a little church, which is still standing at Longford, Ireland, and sailed from Liverpool for Canada.
They had little money after their passage was paid, and nothing with which to start a home in a new and strange country. They took up land in the primeval forest, and there made themselves a home. No work could be had in this immediate neighborhood, that paid real money, so the young husband sought and found work at his trade, that of a stone-mason, in Quebec. This left the young wife alone much of the time, and her nearest neighbor lived a mile distant. There were bears and wildcats and other beasts in the forest, and her days and nights often were filled with fears for her life. The Indians, too, were frequent visitors and them she feared almost as much as she did the wild beasts. The Indians really were friendly, and called her a “brave squaw,” for she hid her fear of them, asked them to sit by her fireside, and tried to be kind to them. Here, in a log cabin, Mary Ann [Hatten] was born, and lived during her early childhood. She was a “bottle baby” and the girl mother was forced to leave her child alone in the cabin while she walked the mile through the forest to the nearest neighbor’s home for milk, when the father was absent from home. Always she feared for the child’s safety, and always she was frightened for herself, but she never thought of staying at home because of her fears.
The [Hatten] family moved to Oswego, N.Y., when the little Mary Ann was a sizable child [probably about 1836], and after the birth of two other children. Her most-distinct recollection of [her family] was [how they crossed] the [frozen] St. Lawrence [River. Her father and mother, and their three children, [merely drove across it,] in a light buggy. Her childish heart was grieved when the little dog, “Nigger,” which they were taking to the new home, escaped and was drowned when it fell through a hole in the ice.
In Oswego, Mr. [Hatten] built many of the business houses of that day, and the lighthouse, which he erected [while he was] a contractor on Lake Erie, still stands. He lived but a few years after coming to Oswego [he probably died about 1840], however, and Mrs. [Ann Hatten] died when her daughter, Mary Ann, was 16 [in 1846].
Following her mother’s death [in 1846], the young girl went to live with the family of Mr. and Mrs. Robert [and Eliza] Wright, who had been close friends of her parents. She learned the dressmaking trade and became self-supporting.
The Wrights moved to Chicago [probably about 1854], and then offered her a home with them if she would come to Chicago. She accepted their offer, and here came the opportunity for the schooling for which she had longed. The Wrights were ardent Congregationalists, and soon became interested in Knox College, at Galesburg, Illinois, and Miss [Hatten] became a student in that institution. Soon, the Wrights felt the lure of Kansas [Territory], and [in 1860] came further west, to [the territory’s town of] Council Grove.
Mr. Wright’s business partner, Mr. Temple, was also interested in Knox College. He had moved to Council Grove [in 1857 or 1858], but before going, he built a cottage in Galesburg in which his sister-in-law and Miss [Hatten] lived and looked after his three motherless boys, whom he wished to educate in Galesburg. This was a happy arrangement, and by it, Miss [Hatten] was enabled to fit herself for teaching.
She came to Council Grove [Kansas, on Saturday, 21 January] 1865, and taught school in that town and [then in nearby] Cottonwood Falls. She secured the spring term in Council Grove in 1865—the year of the closing of the Civil War, when race prejudice was strong and when colored people met many rebuffs, even in abolition Kansas.
“I got into trouble my first Sunday [22 January 1865] in Council Grove,” said Mrs. White, in relating the story, “I went with the Wrights to the Congregational Sunday school and was asked to teach a class of little girls, which of course, I did. One especially bright little dark-skinned [octoroon] girl attracted me, and it did not occur to me that she was a colored child, though among Congregationalists that would have made no difference. I told all the little girls I hoped that I would see them at school the next day, and added a special invitation to the little girl to whom I had been attracted. I told all about my experiences at dinner, and the Wrights said I’d sure enough put my foot into it now, as that little girl was a colored child, and no colored child was allowed to go to school in Council Grove. I said I was perfectly willing to teach a colored child, and I was going to do it if I could.
“News of my inviting a ‘nigger’ to come to school had spread, and the next morning [on Monday, 23 January 1865,] when I went to the schoolhouse [the Union Schoolhouse, which the townspeople later nicknamed the “Little Brown Jug”], there was an air of excitement among the children, and they stood around in groups, whispering. The big bell had been taken away by a member of the school board, but I called the children together with the little bell I carried with me—and by the way, that little bell is still in my possession—and I gave the little colored girl a seat. A pretty, white girl asked to sit by her, which I allowed her to do.
Just then came a knock at the door. ‘I want to talk to you—come outside,’ a man said to me.
‘No, come in,’ I said.
‘There’s not much talking to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to put out that damned nigger—show her to me.’
I refused, and he couldn’t pick her out among the other children He was chagrined when he found his own child was sitting by the ‘nigger.’
Other members of the board then came, and several of the [students’] parents; and, by the end of the first recess, my school of 70 pupils had dwindled down to 20, as they took their children home. The primary teacher also declared that she ‘didn’t come there to teach niggers.’ So she, too, went home, after I told her she’d teach them if she taught with me. Her friends made up a purse for her, and she never came back. One of the larger girls [then] taught the primary children.
“But that wasn’t the end of my troubles. The next morning [on Tuesday, 24 January 1865], I found the windows of the school nailed down and the front door locked. I called on Mr. [Robert] Wright, who was a member of the board, to help me out. He opened the door and rang the bell, and we had school that day, but it was a light attendance.
“That night [on Tuesday, 24 January 1865], the pro-slavery people held an indignation meeting. Mr. Wright asked to be allowed to talk, and he introduced the late [Colonel Samuel Newitt] Wood, of Cottonwood Falls. [To learn more about Samuel Newitt Wood, visit his Find-A-Grave page.] Wood was on my side, all right, but he jollied the other side, and said of course they didn’t want to send their children to school with ‘niggers.’ The ‘niggers’ might get ahead of the white children in their studies and that would be embarrassing. He kept the crowd in good humor, and talked for two hours about everything under the sun, and when he sat down it was time to go home, and the indignation meeting was a fizzle.
“Sentiment was so strong, however, that it seemed best for me not to urge the colored children to come to school. But I went out among the people, and told them that, if the colored children couldn’t come peaceably to school, the board had to provide a school for them, and I nagged them till they did it. They rented a room, hired another woman to teach the colored children, and that was the start of the school for the colored children in Council Grove. I’ve always been proud of the fight I made. I visited the school many years later, and the children knew the story, and they gave me a grand welcome.”
The next year [in 1866,] Miss [Hatten] taught at Cottonwood Falls [while she boarded in Samuel Newitt and Margaret Lyon Wood’s home, which is located about a mile east of the falls and is now on the National Register of Historic Places] and then she again planned to attend the Normal School in Emporia. She came here [Emporia], and, before she had found a place to board, she received news of the serious sickness of her sister, in [Lapeer], Michigan, and she went there to spend the winter. She was married there, in April 1867, to Dr. Allen White, of Emporia.
The Whites came immediately to Emporia, to their home in what was known for many years as the [S. B.] Riggs property, at the corner of Seventh and Merchant [Streets]. Here, on their arrival, they found that the late Mrs. Elizabeth Storrs had prepared dinner for them. Following the dinner, Hall’s Cornet band serenaded them, and their homecoming was pleasant, indeed.
In this house, her only living child, [William Allen] White, was born, on February 10, 1868.
“Will was a puny baby,” said his mother, “and that first summer was hot and dry. He needed to be outdoors, but the heat kept us indoors all day. I used to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning, just as daylight was coming, and take him out in his little buggy. Then, late at night, I would give him another airing. We had a hard time to pull him thru that first summer. We moved to El Dorado by the time he was a year old [in 1869], and the change seemed to do him good, as he was a healthy, hearty child ever afterward.”
Mrs. White lived 20 years in El Dorado [until about 1889], and there, in 1882, Dr. [Allen] White died. He was engaged in the general mercantile business for a time, and later became proprietor of a drug store. He was a man of strong character, and impressed on his son many of his habits of mind and thought. He wished his son might not become addicted to the use of tobacco. “Don’t smoke till you’re 21, son,” he said, “and when you are of age I’ll give you a gold watch and chain.” The son’s promise was given, and kept—and has been kept ever since.
Doctor White wished his son to be able to choose between good and evil, but he was wise enough to know that preaching wouldn’t impress him. So, when Doctor White discovered that his son and a bunch of neighborhood boys were playing cards surreptitiously in the White’s barn loft, he laid his plans accordingly. One hot, sweltering Sunday afternoon, he poked his head through the opening above the ladder that led to the haymow and discovered “the gang” at a card game.
“Why boys,” “Old Doc White” exclaimed, “It’s too hot to play cards in this loft. Come right down and go out on the front porch and play.” They demurred, but “Old Doc” was persistent.
“Why come on,” he coaxed. “It’s too hot here for any use, with all that nice cool front porch going to waste. I can’t allow you to stay here. It’ll make you sick. Come on now, and I’ll ask Mother to make you some lemonade.”
The boys unwillingly descended, and followed “Old Doc” to the front porch, where he brought out chairs for them, and where Mrs. White soon appeared with a pitcher of lemonade. The boys enjoyed the lemonade, but somehow the game had lost its flavor. People passing on the sidewalk looked askance at the boys, as they were playing cards on the White’s front porch on Sunday afternoon, and their scrutiny and their plainly audible remarks made the boys uncomfortable. The game soon broke up, and the boys said they must go home. “Now don’t hurry, boys,” said “Old Doc,” “just stay as long as you want to, and come any afternoon and play cards right here on this porch. I want you to have a good time, and it’s a whole lot more fun here than is a hot, stuffy hay-mow. Come whenever you feel like it, and there’ll always be a pitcher of lemonade on tap.”
The boys came a few times, but the card games languished, and soon they turned their attention elsewhere. With the element of secrecy and stolen delights gone, and without knowing it, the boys were switched off from what might have become a dangerous fondness for cards. Probably all of the boys play cards, as men, but the game never attained great fascination for them.
After their son had completed the work of the El Dorado High School and had had a year’s work in the College of Emporia [probably by 1889—as mentioned above], Mrs. White moved with him to Lawrence, that she might be with him during his work at the University of Kansas. Then, when W. A. White went to Kansas City to take up newspaper work [first, with the Kansas City Journal, and then with the Kansas City Star], she went with him, and lived [there] until she came, with Mr. and Mrs. [William Allen and Sallie Moss Lindsay] White, to Emporia, in 1895. This town ever since has been her home.
In 1904, she built a home on the lot adjoining the W. A. White home on the south, and here she had lived happily, interested always in the world and its happenings, and deeply devoted to her son and his family. Her two grandchildren, Bill and Mary White, were her joy and pride. She was a famous cook, and loved to surprise the family, with whom she took most of her meals until she was no longer able to leave her home, with a favorite dish or a plate of doughnuts or a pie or a pudding of which she knew they were especially fond. She was a fountain of physical and mental energy at an age when many women have laid aside all exertion, and she maintained an independence of action remarkable in one of her years. She read widely during all of her life, and was always informed on the topics of the day.
Mrs. White, during her long life, had seen and been a part of the most remarkable advance in civilization the world has known. She saw the first railroad come into Oswego, New York. She heard the first woman preacher that ever occupied a pulpit in that city, and often she heard Susan B. Anthony speak [probably including Council Grove, Kansas, in October 1867, when Samuel Newitt Wood brought Susan B. Anthony to the state during his women’s-suffrage campaign]. Hooting, hissing crowds followed the early suffrage advocates, and often had eggs and stones thrown at them. Once, following a temperance address, a dozen girls started to pull down the Oswego saloon, but the move was stopped. Mrs. White was one of this group. She signed a temperance pledge and was an ardent advocate of prohibition. She saw Mormonism and Spiritualism rise and fall in Oswego and she learned the dressmaking trade there by hand. In Galesburg [in 1861], she went with the crowd to cheer the boys when they started to the Civil War, and wept because she had no one to send. She said her grief was as real as if she had been parting with [her] father or brother, instead of rejoicing that she had “escaped” the sorrow of such parting. In Galesburg [on 7 October 1858], she heard [the fifth debate between Abraham] Lincoln and [Stephen A.] Douglas, and recalled the excitement when [Rev. Elijah Parish] Lovejoy, the first martyr in the cause of freeing the slaves, was killed [on 7 November 1837, in Alton, Illinois]. She was personally acquainted with Mother [Mary Ann] Bickerdyke, the Civil War nurse, whose home was at Galesburg.
Mrs. White lived through four wars in which the United States was involved—the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American [War], and the Great War [World War I]. She had seen the advent of the sewing machine, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, the undersea cables, electricity, the automobile, wireless [i.e., radio broadcasting], telegraphy, and the airship—perhaps a greater progress in civilization than any other period.
In 1909, at age 79, with Mr. and Mrs. [William Allen] White and their children, she made a five-months trip to Europe and enjoyed it, perhaps more than any other member of the party. With her son, she went to Ireland, where she saw the church in which her mother and father were married, the record of their marriage, and the house in which her mother was born. She rode in an Irish jaunting cart from Dublin to the town in which her father was born, and saw an Irish country town fair on a Saturday. She could trace no relatives, however, as all of her mother’s family had died of cholera in Dublin many years ago. The poverty of the Irish peasants appealed to the sympathies of Mrs. White, and she was grieved that she could not help them to better ways of living. Always her sympathies were with the needy and the suffering, but to the people of her parents’ nativity her heart was especially tender.
L. M. F. [Laura M. French]
This is an annotated version of the original newspaper biography of Mary Ann Hatten White, which originally, and incorrectly, spelled her maiden name as Hatton. The added information is in [brackets]. Submitted by Find A Grave contributor David Aspelin.
French, Laura M. “A biography [of William Allen White’s mother, Mary Ann Hatten White].” The Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, 7 May 1924, p. 4.
A Biography
by “L. M. F.” [Laura M. French]
The following biography of Mrs. [Mary Ann Hatten] White was written by her friend, Miss Laura M. French, to whom she told her life’s story in the course of a twenty-five-year friendly intimacy.
Mary Ann [Hatten] White was born near Quebec, [Upper] Canada, on January 3, 1830. Her parents were Frank [Hatten] and Annie Kelly, both of whom were born in Ireland. Theirs was a romantic courtship and marriage. Fearing the opposition of their parents, they eloped, were married in a little church, which is still standing at Longford, Ireland, and sailed from Liverpool for Canada.
They had little money after their passage was paid, and nothing with which to start a home in a new and strange country. They took up land in the primeval forest, and there made themselves a home. No work could be had in this immediate neighborhood, that paid real money, so the young husband sought and found work at his trade, that of a stone-mason, in Quebec. This left the young wife alone much of the time, and her nearest neighbor lived a mile distant. There were bears and wildcats and other beasts in the forest, and her days and nights often were filled with fears for her life. The Indians, too, were frequent visitors and them she feared almost as much as she did the wild beasts. The Indians really were friendly, and called her a “brave squaw,” for she hid her fear of them, asked them to sit by her fireside, and tried to be kind to them. Here, in a log cabin, Mary Ann [Hatten] was born, and lived during her early childhood. She was a “bottle baby” and the girl mother was forced to leave her child alone in the cabin while she walked the mile through the forest to the nearest neighbor’s home for milk, when the father was absent from home. Always she feared for the child’s safety, and always she was frightened for herself, but she never thought of staying at home because of her fears.
The [Hatten] family moved to Oswego, N.Y., when the little Mary Ann was a sizable child [probably about 1836], and after the birth of two other children. Her most-distinct recollection of [her family] was [how they crossed] the [frozen] St. Lawrence [River. Her father and mother, and their three children, [merely drove across it,] in a light buggy. Her childish heart was grieved when the little dog, “Nigger,” which they were taking to the new home, escaped and was drowned when it fell through a hole in the ice.
In Oswego, Mr. [Hatten] built many of the business houses of that day, and the lighthouse, which he erected [while he was] a contractor on Lake Erie, still stands. He lived but a few years after coming to Oswego [he probably died about 1840], however, and Mrs. [Ann Hatten] died when her daughter, Mary Ann, was 16 [in 1846].
Following her mother’s death [in 1846], the young girl went to live with the family of Mr. and Mrs. Robert [and Eliza] Wright, who had been close friends of her parents. She learned the dressmaking trade and became self-supporting.
The Wrights moved to Chicago [probably about 1854], and then offered her a home with them if she would come to Chicago. She accepted their offer, and here came the opportunity for the schooling for which she had longed. The Wrights were ardent Congregationalists, and soon became interested in Knox College, at Galesburg, Illinois, and Miss [Hatten] became a student in that institution. Soon, the Wrights felt the lure of Kansas [Territory], and [in 1860] came further west, to [the territory’s town of] Council Grove.
Mr. Wright’s business partner, Mr. Temple, was also interested in Knox College. He had moved to Council Grove [in 1857 or 1858], but before going, he built a cottage in Galesburg in which his sister-in-law and Miss [Hatten] lived and looked after his three motherless boys, whom he wished to educate in Galesburg. This was a happy arrangement, and by it, Miss [Hatten] was enabled to fit herself for teaching.
She came to Council Grove [Kansas, on Saturday, 21 January] 1865, and taught school in that town and [then in nearby] Cottonwood Falls. She secured the spring term in Council Grove in 1865—the year of the closing of the Civil War, when race prejudice was strong and when colored people met many rebuffs, even in abolition Kansas.
“I got into trouble my first Sunday [22 January 1865] in Council Grove,” said Mrs. White, in relating the story, “I went with the Wrights to the Congregational Sunday school and was asked to teach a class of little girls, which of course, I did. One especially bright little dark-skinned [octoroon] girl attracted me, and it did not occur to me that she was a colored child, though among Congregationalists that would have made no difference. I told all the little girls I hoped that I would see them at school the next day, and added a special invitation to the little girl to whom I had been attracted. I told all about my experiences at dinner, and the Wrights said I’d sure enough put my foot into it now, as that little girl was a colored child, and no colored child was allowed to go to school in Council Grove. I said I was perfectly willing to teach a colored child, and I was going to do it if I could.
“News of my inviting a ‘nigger’ to come to school had spread, and the next morning [on Monday, 23 January 1865,] when I went to the schoolhouse [the Union Schoolhouse, which the townspeople later nicknamed the “Little Brown Jug”], there was an air of excitement among the children, and they stood around in groups, whispering. The big bell had been taken away by a member of the school board, but I called the children together with the little bell I carried with me—and by the way, that little bell is still in my possession—and I gave the little colored girl a seat. A pretty, white girl asked to sit by her, which I allowed her to do.
Just then came a knock at the door. ‘I want to talk to you—come outside,’ a man said to me.
‘No, come in,’ I said.
‘There’s not much talking to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to put out that damned nigger—show her to me.’
I refused, and he couldn’t pick her out among the other children He was chagrined when he found his own child was sitting by the ‘nigger.’
Other members of the board then came, and several of the [students’] parents; and, by the end of the first recess, my school of 70 pupils had dwindled down to 20, as they took their children home. The primary teacher also declared that she ‘didn’t come there to teach niggers.’ So she, too, went home, after I told her she’d teach them if she taught with me. Her friends made up a purse for her, and she never came back. One of the larger girls [then] taught the primary children.
“But that wasn’t the end of my troubles. The next morning [on Tuesday, 24 January 1865], I found the windows of the school nailed down and the front door locked. I called on Mr. [Robert] Wright, who was a member of the board, to help me out. He opened the door and rang the bell, and we had school that day, but it was a light attendance.
“That night [on Tuesday, 24 January 1865], the pro-slavery people held an indignation meeting. Mr. Wright asked to be allowed to talk, and he introduced the late [Colonel Samuel Newitt] Wood, of Cottonwood Falls. [To learn more about Samuel Newitt Wood, visit his Find-A-Grave page.] Wood was on my side, all right, but he jollied the other side, and said of course they didn’t want to send their children to school with ‘niggers.’ The ‘niggers’ might get ahead of the white children in their studies and that would be embarrassing. He kept the crowd in good humor, and talked for two hours about everything under the sun, and when he sat down it was time to go home, and the indignation meeting was a fizzle.
“Sentiment was so strong, however, that it seemed best for me not to urge the colored children to come to school. But I went out among the people, and told them that, if the colored children couldn’t come peaceably to school, the board had to provide a school for them, and I nagged them till they did it. They rented a room, hired another woman to teach the colored children, and that was the start of the school for the colored children in Council Grove. I’ve always been proud of the fight I made. I visited the school many years later, and the children knew the story, and they gave me a grand welcome.”
The next year [in 1866,] Miss [Hatten] taught at Cottonwood Falls [while she boarded in Samuel Newitt and Margaret Lyon Wood’s home, which is located about a mile east of the falls and is now on the National Register of Historic Places] and then she again planned to attend the Normal School in Emporia. She came here [Emporia], and, before she had found a place to board, she received news of the serious sickness of her sister, in [Lapeer], Michigan, and she went there to spend the winter. She was married there, in April 1867, to Dr. Allen White, of Emporia.
The Whites came immediately to Emporia, to their home in what was known for many years as the [S. B.] Riggs property, at the corner of Seventh and Merchant [Streets]. Here, on their arrival, they found that the late Mrs. Elizabeth Storrs had prepared dinner for them. Following the dinner, Hall’s Cornet band serenaded them, and their homecoming was pleasant, indeed.
In this house, her only living child, [William Allen] White, was born, on February 10, 1868.
“Will was a puny baby,” said his mother, “and that first summer was hot and dry. He needed to be outdoors, but the heat kept us indoors all day. I used to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning, just as daylight was coming, and take him out in his little buggy. Then, late at night, I would give him another airing. We had a hard time to pull him thru that first summer. We moved to El Dorado by the time he was a year old [in 1869], and the change seemed to do him good, as he was a healthy, hearty child ever afterward.”
Mrs. White lived 20 years in El Dorado [until about 1889], and there, in 1882, Dr. [Allen] White died. He was engaged in the general mercantile business for a time, and later became proprietor of a drug store. He was a man of strong character, and impressed on his son many of his habits of mind and thought. He wished his son might not become addicted to the use of tobacco. “Don’t smoke till you’re 21, son,” he said, “and when you are of age I’ll give you a gold watch and chain.” The son’s promise was given, and kept—and has been kept ever since.
Doctor White wished his son to be able to choose between good and evil, but he was wise enough to know that preaching wouldn’t impress him. So, when Doctor White discovered that his son and a bunch of neighborhood boys were playing cards surreptitiously in the White’s barn loft, he laid his plans accordingly. One hot, sweltering Sunday afternoon, he poked his head through the opening above the ladder that led to the haymow and discovered “the gang” at a card game.
“Why boys,” “Old Doc White” exclaimed, “It’s too hot to play cards in this loft. Come right down and go out on the front porch and play.” They demurred, but “Old Doc” was persistent.
“Why come on,” he coaxed. “It’s too hot here for any use, with all that nice cool front porch going to waste. I can’t allow you to stay here. It’ll make you sick. Come on now, and I’ll ask Mother to make you some lemonade.”
The boys unwillingly descended, and followed “Old Doc” to the front porch, where he brought out chairs for them, and where Mrs. White soon appeared with a pitcher of lemonade. The boys enjoyed the lemonade, but somehow the game had lost its flavor. People passing on the sidewalk looked askance at the boys, as they were playing cards on the White’s front porch on Sunday afternoon, and their scrutiny and their plainly audible remarks made the boys uncomfortable. The game soon broke up, and the boys said they must go home. “Now don’t hurry, boys,” said “Old Doc,” “just stay as long as you want to, and come any afternoon and play cards right here on this porch. I want you to have a good time, and it’s a whole lot more fun here than is a hot, stuffy hay-mow. Come whenever you feel like it, and there’ll always be a pitcher of lemonade on tap.”
The boys came a few times, but the card games languished, and soon they turned their attention elsewhere. With the element of secrecy and stolen delights gone, and without knowing it, the boys were switched off from what might have become a dangerous fondness for cards. Probably all of the boys play cards, as men, but the game never attained great fascination for them.
After their son had completed the work of the El Dorado High School and had had a year’s work in the College of Emporia [probably by 1889—as mentioned above], Mrs. White moved with him to Lawrence, that she might be with him during his work at the University of Kansas. Then, when W. A. White went to Kansas City to take up newspaper work [first, with the Kansas City Journal, and then with the Kansas City Star], she went with him, and lived [there] until she came, with Mr. and Mrs. [William Allen and Sallie Moss Lindsay] White, to Emporia, in 1895. This town ever since has been her home.
In 1904, she built a home on the lot adjoining the W. A. White home on the south, and here she had lived happily, interested always in the world and its happenings, and deeply devoted to her son and his family. Her two grandchildren, Bill and Mary White, were her joy and pride. She was a famous cook, and loved to surprise the family, with whom she took most of her meals until she was no longer able to leave her home, with a favorite dish or a plate of doughnuts or a pie or a pudding of which she knew they were especially fond. She was a fountain of physical and mental energy at an age when many women have laid aside all exertion, and she maintained an independence of action remarkable in one of her years. She read widely during all of her life, and was always informed on the topics of the day.
Mrs. White, during her long life, had seen and been a part of the most remarkable advance in civilization the world has known. She saw the first railroad come into Oswego, New York. She heard the first woman preacher that ever occupied a pulpit in that city, and often she heard Susan B. Anthony speak [probably including Council Grove, Kansas, in October 1867, when Samuel Newitt Wood brought Susan B. Anthony to the state during his women’s-suffrage campaign]. Hooting, hissing crowds followed the early suffrage advocates, and often had eggs and stones thrown at them. Once, following a temperance address, a dozen girls started to pull down the Oswego saloon, but the move was stopped. Mrs. White was one of this group. She signed a temperance pledge and was an ardent advocate of prohibition. She saw Mormonism and Spiritualism rise and fall in Oswego and she learned the dressmaking trade there by hand. In Galesburg [in 1861], she went with the crowd to cheer the boys when they started to the Civil War, and wept because she had no one to send. She said her grief was as real as if she had been parting with [her] father or brother, instead of rejoicing that she had “escaped” the sorrow of such parting. In Galesburg [on 7 October 1858], she heard [the fifth debate between Abraham] Lincoln and [Stephen A.] Douglas, and recalled the excitement when [Rev. Elijah Parish] Lovejoy, the first martyr in the cause of freeing the slaves, was killed [on 7 November 1837, in Alton, Illinois]. She was personally acquainted with Mother [Mary Ann] Bickerdyke, the Civil War nurse, whose home was at Galesburg.
Mrs. White lived through four wars in which the United States was involved—the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American [War], and the Great War [World War I]. She had seen the advent of the sewing machine, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, the undersea cables, electricity, the automobile, wireless [i.e., radio broadcasting], telegraphy, and the airship—perhaps a greater progress in civilization than any other period.
In 1909, at age 79, with Mr. and Mrs. [William Allen] White and their children, she made a five-months trip to Europe and enjoyed it, perhaps more than any other member of the party. With her son, she went to Ireland, where she saw the church in which her mother and father were married, the record of their marriage, and the house in which her mother was born. She rode in an Irish jaunting cart from Dublin to the town in which her father was born, and saw an Irish country town fair on a Saturday. She could trace no relatives, however, as all of her mother’s family had died of cholera in Dublin many years ago. The poverty of the Irish peasants appealed to the sympathies of Mrs. White, and she was grieved that she could not help them to better ways of living. Always her sympathies were with the needy and the suffering, but to the people of her parents’ nativity her heart was especially tender.
L. M. F. [Laura M. French]
French, Laura M. “A biography [of William Allen White’s mother, Mary Ann Hatten White].” The Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, 7 May 1924, p. 4.
A Biography
by “L. M. F.” [Laura M. French]
The following biography of Mrs. [Mary Ann Hatten] White was written by her friend, Miss Laura M. French, to whom she told her life’s story in the course of a twenty-five-year friendly intimacy.
Mary Ann [Hatten] White was born near Quebec, [Upper] Canada, on January 3, 1830. Her parents were Frank [Hatten] and Annie Kelly, both of whom were born in Ireland. Theirs was a romantic courtship and marriage. Fearing the opposition of their parents, they eloped, were married in a little church, which is still standing at Longford, Ireland, and sailed from Liverpool for Canada.
They had little money after their passage was paid, and nothing with which to start a home in a new and strange country. They took up land in the primeval forest, and there made themselves a home. No work could be had in this immediate neighborhood, that paid real money, so the young husband sought and found work at his trade, that of a stone-mason, in Quebec. This left the young wife alone much of the time, and her nearest neighbor lived a mile distant. There were bears and wildcats and other beasts in the forest, and her days and nights often were filled with fears for her life. The Indians, too, were frequent visitors and them she feared almost as much as she did the wild beasts. The Indians really were friendly, and called her a “brave squaw,” for she hid her fear of them, asked them to sit by her fireside, and tried to be kind to them. Here, in a log cabin, Mary Ann [Hatten] was born, and lived during her early childhood. She was a “bottle baby” and the girl mother was forced to leave her child alone in the cabin while she walked the mile through the forest to the nearest neighbor’s home for milk, when the father was absent from home. Always she feared for the child’s safety, and always she was frightened for herself, but she never thought of staying at home because of her fears.
The [Hatten] family moved to Oswego, N.Y., when the little Mary Ann was a sizable child [probably about 1836], and after the birth of two other children. Her most-distinct recollection of [her family] was [how they crossed] the [frozen] St. Lawrence [River. Her father and mother, and their three children, [merely drove across it,] in a light buggy. Her childish heart was grieved when the little dog, “Nigger,” which they were taking to the new home, escaped and was drowned when it fell through a hole in the ice.
In Oswego, Mr. [Hatten] built many of the business houses of that day, and the lighthouse, which he erected [while he was] a contractor on Lake Erie, still stands. He lived but a few years after coming to Oswego [he probably died about 1840], however, and Mrs. [Ann Hatten] died when her daughter, Mary Ann, was 16 [in 1846].
Following her mother’s death [in 1846], the young girl went to live with the family of Mr. and Mrs. Robert [and Eliza] Wright, who had been close friends of her parents. She learned the dressmaking trade and became self-supporting.
The Wrights moved to Chicago [probably about 1854], and then offered her a home with them if she would come to Chicago. She accepted their offer, and here came the opportunity for the schooling for which she had longed. The Wrights were ardent Congregationalists, and soon became interested in Knox College, at Galesburg, Illinois, and Miss [Hatten] became a student in that institution. Soon, the Wrights felt the lure of Kansas [Territory], and [in 1860] came further west, to [the territory’s town of] Council Grove.
Mr. Wright’s business partner, Mr. Temple, was also interested in Knox College. He had moved to Council Grove [in 1857 or 1858], but before going, he built a cottage in Galesburg in which his sister-in-law and Miss [Hatten] lived and looked after his three motherless boys, whom he wished to educate in Galesburg. This was a happy arrangement, and by it, Miss [Hatten] was enabled to fit herself for teaching.
She came to Council Grove [Kansas, on Saturday, 21 January] 1865, and taught school in that town and [then in nearby] Cottonwood Falls. She secured the spring term in Council Grove in 1865—the year of the closing of the Civil War, when race prejudice was strong and when colored people met many rebuffs, even in abolition Kansas.
“I got into trouble my first Sunday [22 January 1865] in Council Grove,” said Mrs. White, in relating the story, “I went with the Wrights to the Congregational Sunday school and was asked to teach a class of little girls, which of course, I did. One especially bright little dark-skinned [octoroon] girl attracted me, and it did not occur to me that she was a colored child, though among Congregationalists that would have made no difference. I told all the little girls I hoped that I would see them at school the next day, and added a special invitation to the little girl to whom I had been attracted. I told all about my experiences at dinner, and the Wrights said I’d sure enough put my foot into it now, as that little girl was a colored child, and no colored child was allowed to go to school in Council Grove. I said I was perfectly willing to teach a colored child, and I was going to do it if I could.
“News of my inviting a ‘nigger’ to come to school had spread, and the next morning [on Monday, 23 January 1865,] when I went to the schoolhouse [the Union Schoolhouse, which the townspeople later nicknamed the “Little Brown Jug”], there was an air of excitement among the children, and they stood around in groups, whispering. The big bell had been taken away by a member of the school board, but I called the children together with the little bell I carried with me—and by the way, that little bell is still in my possession—and I gave the little colored girl a seat. A pretty, white girl asked to sit by her, which I allowed her to do.
Just then came a knock at the door. ‘I want to talk to you—come outside,’ a man said to me.
‘No, come in,’ I said.
‘There’s not much talking to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to put out that damned nigger—show her to me.’
I refused, and he couldn’t pick her out among the other children He was chagrined when he found his own child was sitting by the ‘nigger.’
Other members of the board then came, and several of the [students’] parents; and, by the end of the first recess, my school of 70 pupils had dwindled down to 20, as they took their children home. The primary teacher also declared that she ‘didn’t come there to teach niggers.’ So she, too, went home, after I told her she’d teach them if she taught with me. Her friends made up a purse for her, and she never came back. One of the larger girls [then] taught the primary children.
“But that wasn’t the end of my troubles. The next morning [on Tuesday, 24 January 1865], I found the windows of the school nailed down and the front door locked. I called on Mr. [Robert] Wright, who was a member of the board, to help me out. He opened the door and rang the bell, and we had school that day, but it was a light attendance.
“That night [on Tuesday, 24 January 1865], the pro-slavery people held an indignation meeting. Mr. Wright asked to be allowed to talk, and he introduced the late [Colonel Samuel Newitt] Wood, of Cottonwood Falls. [To learn more about Samuel Newitt Wood, visit his Find-A-Grave page.] Wood was on my side, all right, but he jollied the other side, and said of course they didn’t want to send their children to school with ‘niggers.’ The ‘niggers’ might get ahead of the white children in their studies and that would be embarrassing. He kept the crowd in good humor, and talked for two hours about everything under the sun, and when he sat down it was time to go home, and the indignation meeting was a fizzle.
“Sentiment was so strong, however, that it seemed best for me not to urge the colored children to come to school. But I went out among the people, and told them that, if the colored children couldn’t come peaceably to school, the board had to provide a school for them, and I nagged them till they did it. They rented a room, hired another woman to teach the colored children, and that was the start of the school for the colored children in Council Grove. I’ve always been proud of the fight I made. I visited the school many years later, and the children knew the story, and they gave me a grand welcome.”
The next year [in 1866,] Miss [Hatten] taught at Cottonwood Falls [while she boarded in Samuel Newitt and Margaret Lyon Wood’s home, which is located about a mile east of the falls and is now on the National Register of Historic Places] and then she again planned to attend the Normal School in Emporia. She came here [Emporia], and, before she had found a place to board, she received news of the serious sickness of her sister, in [Lapeer], Michigan, and she went there to spend the winter. She was married there, in April 1867, to Dr. Allen White, of Emporia.
The Whites came immediately to Emporia, to their home in what was known for many years as the [S. B.] Riggs property, at the corner of Seventh and Merchant [Streets]. Here, on their arrival, they found that the late Mrs. Elizabeth Storrs had prepared dinner for them. Following the dinner, Hall’s Cornet band serenaded them, and their homecoming was pleasant, indeed.
In this house, her only living child, [William Allen] White, was born, on February 10, 1868.
“Will was a puny baby,” said his mother, “and that first summer was hot and dry. He needed to be outdoors, but the heat kept us indoors all day. I used to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning, just as daylight was coming, and take him out in his little buggy. Then, late at night, I would give him another airing. We had a hard time to pull him thru that first summer. We moved to El Dorado by the time he was a year old [in 1869], and the change seemed to do him good, as he was a healthy, hearty child ever afterward.”
Mrs. White lived 20 years in El Dorado [until about 1889], and there, in 1882, Dr. [Allen] White died. He was engaged in the general mercantile business for a time, and later became proprietor of a drug store. He was a man of strong character, and impressed on his son many of his habits of mind and thought. He wished his son might not become addicted to the use of tobacco. “Don’t smoke till you’re 21, son,” he said, “and when you are of age I’ll give you a gold watch and chain.” The son’s promise was given, and kept—and has been kept ever since.
Doctor White wished his son to be able to choose between good and evil, but he was wise enough to know that preaching wouldn’t impress him. So, when Doctor White discovered that his son and a bunch of neighborhood boys were playing cards surreptitiously in the White’s barn loft, he laid his plans accordingly. One hot, sweltering Sunday afternoon, he poked his head through the opening above the ladder that led to the haymow and discovered “the gang” at a card game.
“Why boys,” “Old Doc White” exclaimed, “It’s too hot to play cards in this loft. Come right down and go out on the front porch and play.” They demurred, but “Old Doc” was persistent.
“Why come on,” he coaxed. “It’s too hot here for any use, with all that nice cool front porch going to waste. I can’t allow you to stay here. It’ll make you sick. Come on now, and I’ll ask Mother to make you some lemonade.”
The boys unwillingly descended, and followed “Old Doc” to the front porch, where he brought out chairs for them, and where Mrs. White soon appeared with a pitcher of lemonade. The boys enjoyed the lemonade, but somehow the game had lost its flavor. People passing on the sidewalk looked askance at the boys, as they were playing cards on the White’s front porch on Sunday afternoon, and their scrutiny and their plainly audible remarks made the boys uncomfortable. The game soon broke up, and the boys said they must go home. “Now don’t hurry, boys,” said “Old Doc,” “just stay as long as you want to, and come any afternoon and play cards right here on this porch. I want you to have a good time, and it’s a whole lot more fun here than is a hot, stuffy hay-mow. Come whenever you feel like it, and there’ll always be a pitcher of lemonade on tap.”
The boys came a few times, but the card games languished, and soon they turned their attention elsewhere. With the element of secrecy and stolen delights gone, and without knowing it, the boys were switched off from what might have become a dangerous fondness for cards. Probably all of the boys play cards, as men, but the game never attained great fascination for them.
After their son had completed the work of the El Dorado High School and had had a year’s work in the College of Emporia [probably by 1889—as mentioned above], Mrs. White moved with him to Lawrence, that she might be with him during his work at the University of Kansas. Then, when W. A. White went to Kansas City to take up newspaper work [first, with the Kansas City Journal, and then with the Kansas City Star], she went with him, and lived [there] until she came, with Mr. and Mrs. [William Allen and Sallie Moss Lindsay] White, to Emporia, in 1895. This town ever since has been her home.
In 1904, she built a home on the lot adjoining the W. A. White home on the south, and here she had lived happily, interested always in the world and its happenings, and deeply devoted to her son and his family. Her two grandchildren, Bill and Mary White, were her joy and pride. She was a famous cook, and loved to surprise the family, with whom she took most of her meals until she was no longer able to leave her home, with a favorite dish or a plate of doughnuts or a pie or a pudding of which she knew they were especially fond. She was a fountain of physical and mental energy at an age when many women have laid aside all exertion, and she maintained an independence of action remarkable in one of her years. She read widely during all of her life, and was always informed on the topics of the day.
Mrs. White, during her long life, had seen and been a part of the most remarkable advance in civilization the world has known. She saw the first railroad come into Oswego, New York. She heard the first woman preacher that ever occupied a pulpit in that city, and often she heard Susan B. Anthony speak [probably including Council Grove, Kansas, in October 1867, when Samuel Newitt Wood brought Susan B. Anthony to the state during his women’s-suffrage campaign]. Hooting, hissing crowds followed the early suffrage advocates, and often had eggs and stones thrown at them. Once, following a temperance address, a dozen girls started to pull down the Oswego saloon, but the move was stopped. Mrs. White was one of this group. She signed a temperance pledge and was an ardent advocate of prohibition. She saw Mormonism and Spiritualism rise and fall in Oswego and she learned the dressmaking trade there by hand. In Galesburg [in 1861], she went with the crowd to cheer the boys when they started to the Civil War, and wept because she had no one to send. She said her grief was as real as if she had been parting with [her] father or brother, instead of rejoicing that she had “escaped” the sorrow of such parting. In Galesburg [on 7 October 1858], she heard [the fifth debate between Abraham] Lincoln and [Stephen A.] Douglas, and recalled the excitement when [Rev. Elijah Parish] Lovejoy, the first martyr in the cause of freeing the slaves, was killed [on 7 November 1837, in Alton, Illinois]. She was personally acquainted with Mother [Mary Ann] Bickerdyke, the Civil War nurse, whose home was at Galesburg.
Mrs. White lived through four wars in which the United States was involved—the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American [War], and the Great War [World War I]. She had seen the advent of the sewing machine, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, the undersea cables, electricity, the automobile, wireless [i.e., radio broadcasting], telegraphy, and the airship—perhaps a greater progress in civilization than any other period.
In 1909, at age 79, with Mr. and Mrs. [William Allen] White and their children, she made a five-months trip to Europe and enjoyed it, perhaps more than any other member of the party. With her son, she went to Ireland, where she saw the church in which her mother and father were married, the record of their marriage, and the house in which her mother was born. She rode in an Irish jaunting cart from Dublin to the town in which her father was born, and saw an Irish country town fair on a Saturday. She could trace no relatives, however, as all of her mother’s family had died of cholera in Dublin many years ago. The poverty of the Irish peasants appealed to the sympathies of Mrs. White, and she was grieved that she could not help them to better ways of living. Always her sympathies were with the needy and the suffering, but to the people of her parents’ nativity her heart was especially tender.
L. M. F. [Laura M. French]
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