Family and youth
William Clarence White, known as Willie, was born on August 29, 1854, in Rochester, New York, the third son of James and Ellen G. White. He grew up in Battle Creek and Greenville, Michigan, and was baptized at fourteen in Greenville by his father.
Publishing and education
At about twenty he helped his father with the Signs of the Times in Oakland, California, and at twenty-one he chaired the committee for the Pacific Press. He later worked at the publishing house in Battle Creek and at the Western Health Reform Institute, and he helped establish Healdsburg College in 1882. He was ordained by the General Conference in 1883 and served on the General Conference Committee for most of his life.
After his father’s death
James White died in August 1881, and from then on Willie assisted his mother in her travels and her publications. In 1883 he was sent to Europe to help set up publishing houses in Switzerland and Norway, and his mother joined him in Switzerland in September 1885.
Australia, 1891–1900
He went with his mother to Australia in 1891 and stayed nine years. He led the Australian Union from 1894 to 1897, and the Cooranbong property for the school that became Avondale College was chosen in 1894. They returned to the United States in September 1900.
Custodian of her writings
After Ellen White died in 1915, her son was one of the five people placed in charge of her estate, and he served as its secretary and director until his own death in 1937. He oversaw the publication of compilations from her writings under her will and prepared an index to the works published by 1926. After 1915 he also wrote Review and Herald articles reviewing his mother’s life.
Family and death
Willie married Mary Kelsey in 1876; she died of tuberculosis in 1890. In 1895 he married Ethel May Lacey in Tasmania. He died of a heart embolism on September 1, 1937, in Battle Creek, Michigan, and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery there. His son Arthur L. White succeeded him at the estate. Jerry Moon’s biography of him was published by Andrews University Press in 1993.
