[2] White, who like his father went by his middle name, Andrew, was born in 1874 to former slaves in King and Queen County, Virginia.

He moved to the city of Baltimore, Maryland, where he lived with his brother and attended Wayland Seminary in Washington.

After Helena Blackadar, a Canadian Baptist missionary and school teacher of his, impressed him with descriptions of the province, where freed American slaves had been resettled after the Revolutionary War, White moved to Nova Scotia in 1900.

Son Jack, was a noted Canadian labour union activist and the second black candidate to run for office in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

[4] He was the only black chaplain in the Canadian military and was a commissioned officer serving with the rank of Honorary Captain.