Andrew D. White

Andrew Dickson White (November 7, 1832 - November 4, 1918) was an American historian and educator, who was the cofounder of Cornell University and served as its first president for nearly two decades. He was known for expanding the scope of college curricula. A politician, he had served as state senator in New York. He was later appointed as a US diplomat to Germany and Russia, among other responsibilities. He was born on November 7, 1832, in Homer, New York, to Clara (née Dickson) and Horace White. Clara was the daughter of Andrew Dickson, a New York State Assemblyman in 1832 and his wife; and Horace was the son of Asa White, a farmer from Massachusetts, and his wife. Their once-successful farm was ruined by a fire when Horace was 13. Despite little formal education and struggles with poverty after his family lost its farm, Horace White became a businessman and wealthy merchant. In 1839 he opened what became a successful bank in Syracuse. Horace and Clara White had two children: Andrew Dickson and his brother. Andrew was baptized in 1835 at the Calvary Episcopal Church on the town green in Homer. He married twice. His first marriage, on September 27, 1857, was to Mary Amanda Outwater (February 10, 1836 - June 8, 1887), daughter of Peter Outwater and Lucia M. Phillips of Syracuse. Mary's maternal grandmother Amanda Danforth, daughter of Asa Danforth, Jr. and wife of Elijah Phillips, Jr., was the first white child born in what would become Onondaga County, New York. Her great-grandfathers included General Asa Danforth, an early pioneer of upstate New York and leader of the State Militia, as well as Elijah Philips, Sr., who had responded to the alarm to Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1775 and later served as the High Sheriff of Onondaga County. Andrew and Mary had three children together: Frederick Davies White, who committed suicide in his forties in 1901 after a prolonged series of illnesses; Clara (White) Newbury, who died before her father; and Ruth (White) Ferry. After his wife died in 1887, White went on a lecture tour and traveled in Europe with his close friend, Daniel Willard Fiske, librarian at Cornell.