William White was born in Philadelphia on March 24th, 1747, and was educated at the college of that city, graduating in 1765. In 1770 he went to England, where he was ordained as a deacon on December 23rd, and as a priest on April 25th, 1772.

Upon his return home, he became assistant minister of Christ and St. Peter’s from 1772–1779, and rector from that year until his death on July 17th, 1836. He also served as chaplain of the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1789, and then of the United States Senate until 1800. Chosen unanimously as first Bishop of Pennsylvania in 1786, he went to England again, with Samuel Provoost, Bishop-elect of New York; and the two men were consecrated in Lambeth Chapel on Septuagesima Sunday, February 4th, 1787, by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishops of Bath and Wells and of Peterborough.

Bishop White was the chief architect of the Constitution of the American Episcopal Church and the overseer of its life during the first generation of its history. He was the Presiding Bishop at its organizing General Convention in 1789, and again from 1795 until his death in Philadelphia on July 17th, 1836.

He was a theologian of significant ability, and among his protégés, in whose formation he had a large hand, were many leaders of a new generation such as John Henry Hobart, Jackson Kemper, and William Augustus Muhlenberg. White’s gifts of statesmanship and reconciling moderation steered the American Church through the first decades of its independent life.