Preston County, West Virginia    Biography: William L. WHITE, JR.

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Submitted by Linda Katalenich, <KatalenL@stratcom.mil>, March 2000
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New 
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc. 
Chicago and New York, Volume II, 
Pg. 406-407 

WILLIAM L. WHITE, JR., is superintendent of the Alpha Portland Cement 
Company's plant at Manheim in Preston County.  This is one of the most
prominent industries in the state, and something regarding it and Mr. 
White, though the latter has been a resident of West Virginia only a few 
years, have a proper place in this publication. 

Mr. White was born at Easton, Pennsylvania, July 26, 1889.  The Whites were 
an old family of Long Branch and Red Bank, New Jersey, where his father, 
William L. White, Sr., was born in 1859, and as a young man removed to 
Pennsylvania, where he entered life insurance and has been highly successful 
in building up an extensive business in that field.  At Easton he married 
Miss Mary E. Hildebrand, now deceased, who spent her life at Easton, where
her father, Wilson Hildebrand, was the last burgess.  William L. White, Sr.,
had four children: William L., Jr., Laura H., Dorothy and J. Ludlow.  Ludlow 
was with the Engineers Corps in France during the war, going overseas soon
after his enlistment, and remaining on active duty in Europe several months 
after the signing of the armistice.

William L. White, Jr., attended public school at Easton and finished his
technical education in Lafayette College, where he graduated a Civil Engineer 
in 1911.  He has had an active experience in various branches of engineering 
for the past ten years.  For a year and a half he was employed on a branch of
the West Short Railroad lines.  Since then his service has been with the Alpha
Portland Cement Company.  He began as a field engineer, and had charge of 
construction work at different plants, with headquarters at Easton.  Mr. 
White knows every technical phase of the cement industry.  In the early years
he supervised mines and quarry work, and has directed the installation of every 
piece of machinery required in cement factories.

Mr. White came to Manheim as superintendent of a local mill in 1916.  He brought
with him a wide experience in the construction of cement warehouses and other 
permanent buildings for his company, and this experience has been utilized at 
Manheim, resulting in reconstruction that has almost made a new plant here.  
The replacing of machinery as the old became inefficient or obsolete, the 
installation of electric shovels, electric locomotives, the substitution of
concrete trestles for the old ones under the company's house tracks, the 
building of three cement warehouses, the construction of cement dwellings 
for workmen, installing and modernizing the company's old water system-all 
these have been features of his work as superintendent and have affected 
vitally the entire system of production and distribution of the product of
this, the only Portland cement mill in the state, where 250 men are regularly
employed.

Through his official connection with an industry which furnishes basic material
for the making of good roads, Mr. White has enlisted permanently in the war 
against poor highways.  He is also in touch with state and local politics in
West Virginia, and has a deep interest in the common schools and keeps himself
thoroughly well informed on the progress of the Manheim school, not only as a 
unit in the general educational system but through its opportunities for 
usefulness to the industry which he serves.  Mr. White was reared in a home 
where the principles of the republican party were upheld, and he has maintained
the spirit of his forefathers in his political creed.  He believes in protection
as a fundamental part of the American industrial policy.

At Easton in April, 1919, Mr. White married Miss Bertha M. Mattes.  They have
known each other from childhood and were schoolmates in high school.  Her 
parents were Harry S. and Sallie K. Mattes, and her father spent all his 
active career with the Lehigh Valley Railway Company, dying while still in 
the service, in 1920.  Mr. and Mrs. White have two children, Elizabeth M. 
and William L. III.