F. T. Whited, president of the Whited & Wheless Company, Limited, of Alden Bridge, La., was born in Terre Haute, Ind., in 1860, and with his parents moved to New Orleans, La., in the spring of 1865.

Mr. Whited’s father, Samuel Whited, had been a northern soldier, was a member of an Indiana regiment and, while fighting ns his conscience dictated, learned to love the country he fought and immediately after being mustered out canto to Louisiana for a permanent home.

The Whited family lived in New Orleans during 1865, 1866 and a portion of 1867 and then moved to Ouachita parish, Louisiana, and settled near Monroe, which has since remained the headquarters and home place of the Whited family.

Samuel Whited became a planter near Monroe and there his son, F. T. Whited -- the subject of this sketch -- spent his youth until he was sent north to school. He spent four years in the city schools of Indianapolis, Ind., remaining there until 1878.

He quit the high school at Indianapolis when he was 18 years old, came back to Louisiana in 1879 and became station agent at Gordon, La., on the line of the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific railroad, where he remained until 1882. He had previously married in Ouachita parish, in 1881. After leaving the railroad he spent his time on a plantation near Gordon and was interested in a mercantile business at Gordon.

In 1887 Mr. Whited went to Shreveport, La., where he assisted in establishing the Consolidated Ice Company in association with F. G. Hudson, E. Fudicker, Edward Ball and others. Mr. Whited was the assistant manager of that company and was associated with the company in a managerial capacity or as a stockholder until 1889, in which year he and H. H. Wheless formed a partnership and went into the retail lumber business in Shreveport, La., in a modest way, opening a yard near the old Houston, East Sc West Texas railroad freight depot. They ultimately established there a planing mill and following that finally owned two different small mills during the next two or three years.

From the retail lumber business it was an easy transition into the shipping of lumber at wholesale, and from that to saw milling on a broader plane.

The Whited & Wheless Company, Limited, was incorporated in 1894, built a mill at Alden Bridge, La., which is still in operation, and in August of 1895 Mr. Whited with his family removed to that place, which is still his home.

Mr. Whited is president of Whited Wheless, Limited; vice president of the Black Lake Lumber Company; treasurer of the Star & Crescent Lumber Company; a director in the Continental Bank & Trust Company, of Shreveport; director in the Shreveport Creosoting Company and one of its organizers; looks personally after his cotton plantation of 1,200 acres situated in Ouachita parish, near Monroe; is interested in the Consolidated Ice Company, of Monroe, La., and owns a 10,000-acre cattle ranch ten miles east of Sweetwater on the Texas & Pacific railroad, in Fisher county, Texas.