attended an "old field school", paid for by subscription. After the American Civil War, the Reconstruction era state legislature established the first public schools for black children in the state. At Welches Creek in 1870, White met the teacher David P. Allen, who encouraged him. Allen moved to Lumberton, where he established the Whitin Normal School. White studied academic courses there for a couple of years, including Latin, and boarded with Allen and his family. He saved money by running the family farm for a year for his father. Wiley White left the family for Washington, D.C., in 1872 and worked for nearly two decades as a laborer at the Treasury Department. In 1874 White started studies at Howard University, founded in 1867 in Washington, D.C. as a historically black college open to men and women of all races. He studied classical subjects to be certified as a schoolteacher. In addition, he worked for five months at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which had visitors from around the world, and got to see something of its thriving black community, some of whose ancestors had been free since shortly after the American Revolutionary War, when Pennsylvania abolished slavery. White finished at Howard in 1877 and returned to North Carolina, where he was hired as a principal at a school in New Bern. He also read the law, studying it in the city as a legal apprentice under former Superior Court Judge William J. Clarke, who had become a Republican after the war and founded a newspaper. In 1879 White was admitted to the North Carolina bar. Marriage and family On February 27, 1879, White married Fannie B. Randolph, who was the daughter of John H Randolph, Jr, and Della Redmond Randolph. She died in September 1880, soon after the birth of their daughter Della. In 1882 he married Nancy J. Scott, who died the same year. On March 15, 1887, he married Cora Lena Cherry. Her sister Louisa was married to Henry Plummer Cheatham, a future political rival. White and Cora had three children: Mary Adelyne, called "Mamie;" Beatrice Odessa (who died young); and George Henry White, Jr. Three of White's four children survived to adulthood: Della died in 1916 in Washington, D.C., followed by George Jr., who died in Pittsburgh in 1927. Mamie died in New York City in 1974. His wife, Cora Lena White, died in 1905. In