John Campbell White

John Campbell White (March 17, 1884 – June 11, 1967) was a prominent U.S. diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to Haiti (1941–1944) and Peru (1944–1945). Early life White was born at the American Legation in London on March 17, 1884. He was the son of Henry White (1850–1927) and Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherford (1853–1916). His father was a diplomat during the 1890s and 1900s who served as United States Ambassador to France and Italy, and one of the signers of the Treaty of Versailles. His only sibling was Margaret Muriel White (1880–1943), who married Count Ernst Hans Christoph Roger Hermann Seherr-Thoss, a Prussian aristocrat in 1909. After his mother's death, his father remarried to Emily Vanderbilt Sloane (1852–1946) in 1920. His stepmother was the daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) and the granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877). His paternal grandparents were John Campbell White and Eliza Ridgely. They family was wealthy and socially well-connected in Maryland where, as a boy, his father was taken to meet then-President Franklin Pierce and spent much of his childhood at Hampton, the family estate which today is run by the National Park Service. His maternal grandparents were Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816–1892), the lawyer and pioneering astrophotographer, and Margaret Stuyvesant Chanler (1820–1890). Through his mother, his aunt was Stuyvesant Rutherfurd and his uncle was Winthrop Rutherfurd.