My Genealogy Hound

MILTON P. WHITE, M. D., a skillful surgeon and successful general medical practitioner of Dowagiac, Cass County, Mich., has won a high place in the regard of the community by his constant and unflagging devotion to the duties of his profession. Our subject began his able career as a physician in his birthplace, Volinia Township, Cass County, Mich., where he was born December 19, 1852. Dr. White is of Southern descent. His father, John White, was a native of South Carolina and was reared and educated in the home of his childhood. Ambitious and energetic, he came to the North when only a young man of eighteen. Thoroughly self-reliant and carefully trained into habits of industrious thrift, he was well fitted to begin the daily work of life. By trade a blacksmith, he engaged in that occupation all his days, and combined with the work of the anvil the labor of agricultural pursuits, and was one of the most thorough and practical farmers in his region of the country. A representative American citizen of sterling integrity, he led a life of busy usefulness up to the time of his death, in 1865.

The mother of Dr. White was in maidenhood Miss Hannah Baker, daughter of Nathan Baker, a native Pennsylvanian and a prominent member of the Quaker sect, who brought his family up in a rigid observance of the tenets and belief of that religious denomination. The home of John and Hannah (Baker) White sheltered six sturdy sons, of whom our subject was the youngest born. Reared in the township of Volinia, he attended the district school of the neighborhood and there laid the firm foundation of study afterward completed by a course of instruction in an excellent academy at Valparaiso. Supplementing his English education in the higher branches with a professional course of study, Milton P. White entered the medical department of the Northwestern University at Chicago, and, graduating in 1880 in medicine and surgery, was launched upon his career in life as an M. D. Returning to Wakelee, about one mile from his birthplace in Volinia Township, he at once began the practice of medicine among the acquaintances and associations of youth, and for seven years went the professional rounds, enduring the hardships and discomforts of a country doctor.

In the fall of 1886, Dr. White removed to Dowagiac, and in the seven years past has acquired a large and rapidly extending practice and has been prominently associated with the social and public interests of his present home. Upon September 14, 1881, Dr. Milton White and Miss Rose E. Carman, of Schoolcraft, St. Joseph County, were united in marriage. The accomplished wife of our subject was one of ten children, all of the brothers and sisters living to adult age. Her father, W. P. Carman, was a prosperous general agriculturist and is yet surviving, at the advanced age of eighty-three years. Her mother, Mrs. Lydia (Townsend) Carman, is also living, the venerable husband and wife having spent fifty-three years together. The pleasant home of Dr. and Mrs. White has been blessed by the birth of two children, Baker T. and Ruth White. Although not actively interested in politics, our subject is a true American citizen and ever casts his vote in behalf of local and national advancement.