WHITE, J. Hayes, Montgomery County, TN., then E. Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana



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J. Hayes White, Baton Rouge, East Baton Rouge parish, La., has been engaged
in agricultural pursuits in Louisiana since he was eighteen years of age.
He is a native of Montgomery county, Tenn., born December 28, 1826, and is
a son of William Stewart White, who was born in 1787 near Elizabethtown, N.
C., of Scotch parents, a short while after emigrating to the state.  His
mother was born in 1802, on the Roanoke river, Botetourt county, VA., her
maiden name was Lucy W. Sherman, and they were married in 1822.  Six
children were born to them, four of whom are living.  The parents were
members of the Presbyterian church.  Our subject received his education in
a boys' school in his native county, and was reared on his father's
plantation.  He was trained to all the details of farming, and has worked
in a field with fifty or sixty negroes.  As before stated he came to
Louisiana at the age of eighteen years, and engaged in the cultivation of
cotton.  This experiment did not prove wholly satisfactory, so he began to
give some attention to sugar culture.  When he came to the state his means
were limited, and he had but 275 acres in his plantation.  He has added to
this until now he has 1,000 acres in a high state of cultivation.  His
principal crops are sugar and cotton and corn.  His sugar-house was
recently destroyed by fire, which is a great inconvenience as well as a
serious loss.  Mr. White has always been a man of industrious habits, and
before the war he had accumulated a considerable amount of property.  When
there was a call for men to go to the defense of the South he abandoned his
private interests and enlisted in the ordnance department.  He was engaged
chiefly in carrying communications from Shreveport to Mexico, and had
control of the trains.  He remained in the service until the close of the
war, and when he returned to his home he met a most discouraging prospect.
His lands were laid waste, his buildings were partially destroyed, and the
country was generally reduced to a state of desolation.  Like many another
courageous soul he went to work, and with the labor of the past twenty-five
years he has succeeded in retrieving his fortunes.  He has never taken an
active part in political movements, and has no ambition to hold public
office.  He is a man of unquestioned integrity, and has the confidence of
the entire community.  Since his father's death, in 1841, Mr. White cared
for his three sisters until they married, also for his mother, and for the
last fifteen years of her declining life satisfied her every financial
wish.  She died in 1889.  He is unmarried.

Biographical and Historical Memoires of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 451-452.
Published by the Goodspeed Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892.

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