Author: White, Thomas
Biography:
WHITE, Thomas (1758-1825: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born in Hexham, Northumberland, to Ann (Simpson) and William White. Nothing is known about his education, but he was a gifted mathematician who, in 1752, became the mathematics master and, later, rector of the Dumfries Academy. For two years he served as second lieutenant in the Dumfries volunteers under Arent Schuyler De Peyster (q.v.). White corresponded with various learned men, including Dugald Stewart, and he published in scientific journals. When Thomas Carlyle applied for a teaching position in Annan, he was interviewed by White; in a letter to his friend Thomas Murray, Carlyle described White as “a lank, grim, raw-boned Don-Cossack-looking man of about 6 feet in height and sixty years of age…of great Mathematical knowledge—of much reading—and deep research.” White was married—possibly to Jean McKnight of Dumfries in 1789—and had children. He died at Dumfries after a year of declining health and was buried in St. Michael’s churchyard. In 1796 he had published a broadside, “To the Memory of Robert Burns.” (ancestry.co.uk 16 Dec. 2020; John McDiarmid, Sketches from Nature [1830]; https:www.carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu 16 Dec. 2020; William McDowell, Memorials of St. Michael’s [1876]) SR