John R. White

John Rucker White (1872) was a plantation owner, farmer, and interstate slave trader working out of the U.S. state of Missouri in the 25 years prior to the American Civil War.

He was primarily active in Missouri and Louisiana, but also trafficked in people from Kentucky and Virginia. He has been described as "by far the largest and most successful slave trader who operated in the mid-Missouri area." According to a 1914 history of slavery in Missouri, "John R. White of Howard County was a wealthy planter of good repute who dealt in slaves." Howard County lies along the banks of the Missouri River, a tributary of the Mississippi River, in a section of Missouri known as Little Dixie, which had plantation slavery very much in the style of the Deep South.

There is a "John R. White, Slave Record Book (1846–1860)" in the Chinn Collection of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, from which researchers of slavery garner, "For traders in the lower Mississippi River valley, the most significant development was the arrival of steamboats during the 1820s. Most large traders in that region, such as John White from Missouri, used these vessels to transport the hundreds of Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia slaves that they and their agents bought each year to Louisiana and other states in the Deep South." Provided by Wikipedia