White, Horace, 1865-1914

Horace White (1865-1943) was an American lawyer, state legislator, and Republican governor of New York. He lived and practiced law in the city of Syracuse for more than thirty years.

Horacw White was born at Buffalo on 7 October 1865, first son of Horace Keep and Marion (Strong) White. The White family was prominent in the affairs of upstate New York, and Horace's uncle, Andrew Dickson White, was the first president of Cornell University. A family tree is available here (if online), or at the end of this finding aid (if in hard copy).

Graduated from Cornell in 1887 and the Columbia University Law School in 1889, White studied law in the Syracuse office of Frank Hiscock before entering practice in Syracuse, where his firm of White, Cheney, Shinaman, and O'Neill was long located in the White Memorial Building. In 1896 he began the first of six consecutive terms as a Republican state senator, representing Onondaga County. As chairman of the Committee on Cities he played an influential role in the development of chartering provisions for second-class cities in the state and in the drawing of the first charter for the City of New York at the time of the consolidation of 1898. Other of his legislative work concerned the civil service law and additional reforms.

In 1908 Horace White was elected lieutenant-governor on the Republican ticket headed by Charles Evans Hughes, then running for his second term. White became governor on 6 October 1910, when Governor Hughes resigned after being named an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, and served as governor until 1 January 1911. He did not seek his party's nomination to succeed himself.

Remaining a prominent figure in the political, business, and social life of Syracuse for more than thirty years after he left the governor's chair, he served as president of the Post-Standard Company in Syracuse and was long a trustee of Cornell University. He married in 1903 Mrs. Jane (Lines) Denison, who died in 1937. They had no children. He died in New York on 27 November 1943, survived by his brothers Andrew S. and Ernest I. White.

From the guide to the Horace White Papers, 1903-1914, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)