Stephen V. White

Stephen Van Culen White ( born August 1, 1831 Chatham County, North Carolina; † January 18, 1913 in Brooklyn, New York) was an American lawyer and politician. Between 1887 and 1889 he represented the State of New York in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

Stephen Van Culen White was born a few weeks before the slave revolt led by Nat Turner. His family moved to Illinois and settled near Otterville in Jersey County down. He attended the Free School, which Dr. Silas Hamilton founded, and in 1854 graduated at Knox College in Galesburg. He then worked in a trading house in St. Louis ( Missouri). White studied law and began after the receipt of his admission to practice law on November 4, 1856. He retired in the same year to Des Moines ( Iowa), where he worked as a lawyer until 1 January 1865. During this time he was in 1864 appointed acting Attorney General for Iowa. The following year he moved to New York City, where he pursued banking transactions. He was a member of the New York Stock Exchange. After he helped to found the American Astronomical Society as an astronomer, he was elected in 1883 to its first president.

Politically, he was a member of the Republican Party. In the congressional elections of 1886, he was the third electoral district of New York in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of Darwin R. James on March 4, 1887. Since he gave up for reelection in 1888, he retired after March 3 in 1889 from the Congress. Then he took his work as a lawyer again. He died on January 18, 1913 in Brooklyn and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.