Whitesburg was named for John Daugherty White.
Mr. White, a Representative from Kentucky was born near Manchester, Clay County, Ky., on January 16, 1849. He attended a private school until 1865 in Eminence (Ky.) College and the University of Kentucky at Lexington until 1870. He graduated from the law department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1872 and also attended the medical department of the same institution. He was admitted to the bar by the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1875 and was a practicing lawyer afterward.
Mr. White was elected as a Republican to the Forty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1875-March 3, 1877), but declined to be a candidate for re-nomination. He served as chairman of the Kentucky Republican State convention at Louisville in 1879, and as a member of the State house of representatives in 1879 and 1880. He resigned in 1880; and was endorsed and reelected without opposition during the sitting of the legislature.
He served as delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1880 and was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1881. He was later elected as a Republican to the Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1881-March 3, 1885) and declined to be a candidate for re-nomination in 1884 and resumed the practice of law in Louisville, Ky.
He was an unsuccessful candidate of the State Prohibition Party for Governor of Kentucky in 1903, as well as an unsuccessful candidate of the Progressive Party for judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1912.
Mr. White died near Manchester, Ky. on January 5, 1920; interment was in the family burying ground near Manchester, Clay County, Ky.
