Edward White was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1758, and joined a local militia unit which marched to meet the British at Concord in April, 1775. He served with Massachusetts regiments in the Hudson Valley campaign, and as Lieutenant and Adjutant in the first Battalion of Light Infantry, first Brigade, commanded by Major General the Marquis de Lafayette in the expedition in Virginia against Lieutenant General Earl Cornwallis, and was present at the surrender at Yorktown.

Major White arrived in Savannah on 7 November 1785. He was appointed Customs Officer there the following year, and established mercantile businesses in Savannah and at Petersburg, a new town being developed at the mouth of the Broad River above Augusta.

In 1792 Edward White married Mildred Scott Stubbs of Louisville, Georgia in Brookline, Massachusetts. Their son Benjamin Aspinwall White was born in Louisville in 1794, followed by Thomas, born in 1801, James Seagrove, who died in infancy, and Maria Susannah, born in Savannah in 1805. Despite family and business ties to the Georgia upcountry, the family lived principally at Savannah, where they resided on Warren Square. Governor George Mathews appointed Major White as Clerk of the Court of Ordinary of Chatham County in 1795, and he was re-elected to office in 1797. He was appointed to the command of the Watch and City Guard of Savannah in 1796, joined the city's Union Society, and, as a veteran officer of the Revolution, was an active member of the Society of the Order of the Cincinnati.

When Milledgeville was laid out in 1805, Major White bought property on the south side of Greene Street between Liberty and Clarke Streets. Mildred White's uncle General John Scott and his partner Jett Thomas were constructing the State House, and it was probably under Scott's direction that the Whites built their Milledgeville house in 1806. General Scott built a similar house for himself at Scottsboro, just south of Milledgeville that same year, and later constructed a house on the northeast corner of Clarke and Greene Streets. The latter residence was sold to the State of Georgia during the governorship of David B. Mitchell.

In May, 1807, the Justices of the Inferior Court of Chatham County attempted to dismiss Major White as Clerk of the Court of Ordinary, demanding that probate records be turned over to an officer they appointed. As a duly-elected official holding a commission from the governor, White steadfastly refused the Justices' order, and they directed the Sheriff to seize county records and arrest White, who appealed their action to Governor Jared Irwin. Governor Irwin laid the case before the legislature and the General Assembly restored White to office as its second order of business in the new State House in Milledgeville in 1807. Edward White retained the office until his death. The legislators were probably among the first to enjoy Major White's hospitality in his new capital residence.

In May, 1808, Edward White purchased a plantation in Jones County, naming it Brookline in honor of his native community. Brookline served as the family's summer seat. A newspaper account of Major White's plantation hospitality notes: "The old Major was an officer of the Regular Army of the Revolution, and made it a rule to duly celebrate, with his neighbors, all the battles of the war in which he was engaged. He had on the place a small four pound cannon, which was used to fire the salute on such occasions, and whenever the cannon was fired it was a signal and invitation to the neighbors to come and eat barbecue and drink rum."

Major White died in Savannah in 1812 and was interred with honors in Colonial Cemetery. He was buried with a sword presented to him by General George Washington. Mildred White died in Milledgville in 1825 and is buried in Memory Hill Cemetery.

Two of Major and Mrs. White's children lived their adult lives in Milledgeville. Maria Susannah, the White's only daughter, was educated in the north and married Francis Vincent DeLaunay of Milledgeville, who served as the incorporated city's first mayor in 1836. The DeLaunay house, which is similar to the White house, is located on Montgomery Street at Jefferson Street.

Benjamin Aspinwall White, the White's eldest son, graduated from Harvard in 1811, and received his Medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1817. He married Jane deClancy of Savannah and established his medical practice in Milledgeville. Dr. White served on the founding board of Georgia Lunatic Asylum, on the Georgia medical examination board, and was president of the state medical society for some twenty-five years. He was mayor of Milledgeville in 1843, and Surgeon General of the State of Georgia from 1861 to 1865. Dr. and Mrs. White lived in his father's Greene Street house, where they raised a large family. They also maintained Brookline, the family plantation in Jones County.

Three of Dr. White's sons took part in the War Between the States. Thomas Williams White led a company of Georgians overland to the California gold fields in 1849. He laid out the city of San Jose and served as its mayor before returning to Georgia, where he commanded Baldwin County's Black Springs Rifles. He later served as a judge in Marietta. Samuel Gore White received his Medical degree from Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College prior to service in the Mexican War. Cutting short a study tour of Europe in 1860, he returned home to serve as Surgeon in Cobb's Legion, C.S.A. Oliver White served with Georgia troops and returned home to manage Brookline plantation, which later passed to his son-in-law, George Tweedy Stallings, baseball's "Miracle Man" who led the Boston Braves to pennant victory in 1914. Stallings re-named the plantation Meadowmire and used it as a training ground for the Braves.

Dr. Benjamin White's eldest son Edward James White, a local pharmacist, inherited the Greene Street house upon his father's death in 1866. The last generation of the White family to live in the house were the children of Dr. Joseph Hill White, distinguished member of the Marine Hospital Service and a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt. Dr. White used mosquito eradication techniques to control a yellow fever outbreak two years before Dr. Walter Reed's definitive research in Cuba.

After the death of Edward James White the house was sold to the Conn family. It was moved from its original Greene Street site to South Clarke Street around the turn of the century. Colquitt Newell recalled watching buggies and wagons detour around the house during the weeks it sat mired in mud in the intersection of Clarke and Greene Streets.

The Jere Moore family owned the house for the first half of the twentieth century. When the Moore family sold the house, it became a boarding house and apartments. Its restoration was begun in July, 1989. It is now known as the Major Edward White house in tribute to its original owner and his contribution to the cause of American independence and the economic and political development of his adopted state.

E. Lorene Flanders lflander@mail.gcsu.edu
The Major Edward White House
Milledgeville, Georgia

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