Frederick Edward White

FREDERICK EDWARD WHITE was born in Prussia, Germany, January 19, 1844, and died at Sigourney, Iowa, February 14, 1920. With his widowed mother and two sisters he emigrated to America in 1857, coming to the north part of Keokuk County, Iowa. For four years he worked in that vicinity as a farm hand, part of the time attending common school. In 1861 he enlisted in the Eighth Iowa Infantry but was rejected on account of his youth. In February. 1862, he re-enlisted, this time in Company I, Thirteenth Iowa Infantry, served as a private until the end of the war, and was mustered out in August, 1865. He returned home and again engaged in farm labor. In 1866 he was married and settled on a farm of his own. For the next forty-five years he lived on that farm, adding to it from time to time and becoming successful as a farmer and stockman. He was a great reader and an intense student of political subjects. He early adopted the theories of Thomas Jefferson and being himself of a philosophical turn of mind and cultivating the art of public speaking, he gained some local prominence as a speaker. In 1890 the Democrats of the Sixth District nominated him for congress, and he was elected, defeating John F. Lacey, and served in the Fifty-second Congress. In congress he made at least two notable speeches, one being on disarmament, and the other on the tariff question. The latter became one of the most widely circulated speeches ever delivered in congress, being translated into various languages and used for years by Democratic committees as a campaign document. Mr. White was renominated for congress in 1892, but was then defeated by Major Lacey. In 1897 he was nominated by the Democratic party for governor of Iowa, but was defeated by L. M. Shaw. He was nominated again for the same office in 1899 and was again defeated by Governor Shaw. In 1908 he was nominated for governor a third time, and this time was defeated by B. F. Carroll. In 1911 he retired from his farm and removed to Sigourney. When the World War opened he was, as might have been expected, intensely loyal to his adopted country and it was while delivering a speech at Ottumwa in the interests of the Red Cross that he was stricken with apoplexy, from which he never fully recovered. In his life he overcame the handicaps of poverty, hardships and lack of education. He labored by day and read by night. He was a foe of aristocracy and militarism. He ardently loved the institutions of this republic. He was an original and independent thinker in religion as well as in politics, and was an orator of unusual ability.

SOURCE: Annals of Iowa, 3rd Series, Vol. 12, No. 5, July 1920, p. 388-9