Researching Edward White

Born in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, White practiced law in New Orleans after graduating from the University of Louisiana. He also attended the College of the Immaculate Conception, present-day Jesuit High School in New Orleans, class of 1865. His father, Edward Douglass White Sr., was the 10th Governor of Louisiana and a Whig US Representative. White fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and was captured in 1865. After the war, White won election to the Louisiana State Senate and served on the Louisiana Supreme Court. As a member of the Democratic Party, White represented Louisiana in the United States Senate from 1891 to 1894.

In 1894, President Grover Cleveland appointed White as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1910, President William Howard Taft elevated him to the position of Chief Justice. The appointment surprised many contemporaries, as Taft was a member of the Republican Party. White served as Chief Justice until his death in 1921 when he was succeeded by Taft.

He sided with the Supreme Court majority in Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld the legality of state segregation to provide "separate but equal" public facilities in the United States, despite protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to equal protection of the laws. In one of several challenges to Southern states' grandfather clauses, used to disfranchise African-American voters at the turn of the century, he wrote for a unanimous court in Guinn v. United States, which struck many of them down. He also wrote the opinion in the Selective Draft Law Cases, which upheld the constitutionality of conscription.

He published a number of historical novels, including El Supremo: A Romance of the Great Dictator of Paraguay (1916),The Unwilling Vestal (1918), Andivius Hedulio (1921) and Helen (1926), but he is best remembered for fantasy horror stories such as "The House of the Nightmare" and "Lukundoo" that were based on his own nightmares. Two collections of his short fiction were published in his lifetime, The Song of the Sirens (1919) and Lukundoo and Other Stories (1927).

"Lukundoo", White's most frequently anthologized story, is the tale of an American explorer in a remote section of Africa who incurs the wrath of the local witch doctor, who casts a spell on him. Hundreds of sore pustules erupt all over the explorer's body. As these develop, it becomes clear that each sore is actually a sort of homunculus: a tiny African man, emerging head-first from within the explorer's flesh. He is able to terminate the development of individual homunculi by beheading them as they develop, but there are too many for him to defeat them all – and some of them are on portions of his back which he cannot reach. The explorer's only option is suicide.

As his extensive "selected bibliography on the history of Paraguay during the days of 'El Supremo,' Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia" and brief Preface point out, White took great pains to make his historical novel El Supremo quite realistic and historically accurate. As he writes in the Preface: "The minor characters are mostly also historical. Only Hawthorne, Cecelia and Beltran, the Mayorgas and the Velardes are fictitious." He then goes on to list by name about two dozen characters who "are as authentic as their names" along with another two dozen or so where he admits "The first names of these characters, however, it has been found advisable to alter", mainly because there were just too many "christened Juan or Jose", but "in a romance any one would become hopelessly confused." He admits to changing the English Dr. Parlett's name to Tom for effect and gave names to two characters whose names have been lost in the histories: El Pelado's and El Zapo's.

Two posthumous collections of his fiction have been published by Midnight House: The House of the Nightmare (12547ac) edited by John Pelan and Sesta and Other Strange Stories (2001) edited by Lee Weinstein. The latter contains mostly previously unpublished and uncollected material.

During 1885 White began a utopian science fiction novel, Plus Ultra. He destroyed the first draft and started over in 1901, then worked on it for most of the rest of his life. The resulting monumental work—estimated by one critic at 500,000 words—remains unpublished, although a portion of it was released separately in 1920 as the novella From Behind the Stars.

On March 30, 1934, seven years to the day after the death of his wife, Agnes Gerry, he committed suicide by gas inhalation in the bathroom of his Baltimore home. His last book, Matrimony (1932) was a memoir of his happy marriage to her.

White was born in London, England, and was largely self-taught. He became a violinist in a trio and various dance bands, performing also on saxophone and clarinet. He became known as an arranger of music and, after service in the RAF during World War II, he ran a ballroom orchestra at the Grand Spa Hotel in Bristol. In 1961, the first stereophonic single ever released in the UK, was billed as 'The Sound of Ed White', playing "Coral Reef" and "Tropical Blue". This was released by Pye Records.

White was born in Bristol, England. From approximately 1853 to 160 he worked the Bendigo goldfields. He was acting Victorian Government Astronomer 1875-76 and an assistant to Robert L. J. Ellery at the Melbourne Observatory 1860 to 1892.

White was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Victoria (president 1902) and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society

He was born in Carapook to grazier Thomas George White and Margaret Ellen O'Brien. He had little formal education and was a rural itinerant worker, settling in Hamilton around 1895. He acquired land at Echuca and Cavendish in partnership with his brother, and on 25 April 1906 married Lily Crisp, with whom he had nine children. In 1907 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as a non-Labor member for Western Province. He served as a Liberal, Nationalist and UAP member until his defeat in 1931. White retired to Melbourne in 1949 and died in Box Hill in 1959.

Although some sources claim he was born in Philadelphia, researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc give his birthplace as Alabama. He moved to California in 1932, and established himself as a bandleader. With various bands, credited as the Hollywood All Stars or the Wampus Cats, he recorded sporadically for several labels between the mid-1940s and late 1950s. He also had a radio show on NBC in the mid-1940s, when he was known as "The Man in the Moon".

His biggest success as a recording artist came in 1949, when "Late After Hours" on the Selective label, credited to "The Great Gates", reached number 6 on the R&B chart. In 1952, he recorded in Chicago with bandleader Red Saunders, and later recorded in Los Angeles on the Aladdin, 4 Star and Specialty labels. His last recordings, as an organist, were in 1962, on the Robins Nest label.

White died in 1992, in Culver City, California.