John De Haven White , a son of John and Sarah (De Haven) White, was born on a farm near New Holland, Lancaster County, Pa. When he was seven years old, both of his parents died, and he was bound out to a farmer, a hard taskmaster, from whom he shortly ran away.
He received his earliest education in a rural school. He served next as a carpenter's apprentice for several years, and at the same time acquired a good preliminary education. In 1836 he began the study of both medicine and dentistry in Philadelphia, the former as a student of James Bryan, M. D. , and the latter under the preceptorship of Michael A. Blankman. Shortly thereafter he devoted himself exclusively to dentistry, at first for a few months in Middletown and Bethlehem, Pa. He was graduated from the Jefferson Medical College in 1844.
In 1837 he returned to Philadelphia, where he practised as a dentist till a few years before his death. He was a skilful and successful practitioner, and one of the most enthusiastic leaders of his day in the advancement of dental education. Early in his professional career, Samuel Stockton White and Thomas Wiltberger Evans were among his private students. It is said that Napoleon III invited him in 1865 to join Evans in forming a national dental school in Paris, and that the invitation was declined. Beginning shortly after he entered practice, a few of the progressive dentists of Philadelphia, under his leadership, met on fixed dates for the interchange of professional knowledge and experience. These informal meetings led to the organization, in 1845, of the Pennsylvania Association of Dental Surgeons, in which he took a leading part, serving as its president in 1857. In 1850 he became a member of the American Society of Dental Surgeons and was one of the organizers of the Philadelphia College of Dental Surgery (first session, 1852), in which he was professor of anatomy and physiology (1854 - 56), and of operative dental surgery and special dental physiology (1854 - 56). From 1853 to 1859 he was editor-in-chief of the Dental News Letter, and from 1859 to 1865 one of the editors of the Dental Cosmos. To these and to other dental periodicals he contributed some ninety articles on a wide variety of dental subjects, mostly of a practical character (1845 - 75). He was vice-president of the American Dental Convention in 1861. Among his later dental students were Charles and Elwood Hopkins and Robert Huey. Theodore F. Chupein was his assistant in practice in 1865 and 1866. He was prominent in Masonry and spent the last few years of his life in the Masonic Home in Philadelphia, where he died of heart disease in his eighty-first year.
He was a large man of extraordinary physical and mental vigor, constitutionally convivial, fond of literature and music, but bluff and aggressive, with strong prejudices on professional and other subjects.
In 1836 he married Mary Elizabeth Meredith of Philadelphia. They had eleven children, of whom two sons, both practising dentists, and a daughter survived them.
