Thank you very much for responding.
Clicking through to the cite to get to the original document that it refers to, one comes to a birth record regarding a “John Calvin White” who was born in 1947. That John Calvin White does not appear to be related to THIS John White born in 1768, so the record cannot be evidence as to John White’s (b. 1768) middle name.
In fact, it may explain why John White (b. 1768) was erroneously given the name Calvin. i.e., Someone mixed up two John White’s (an extremely common name) and was a couple of centuries off. (That might seem like an odd error, but I see ones like it online on a daily basis.)
It wasn’t as common (although not unheard of) in the mid-1700s for people to have middle names. For every legitimate middle name I see in that era, I see many cases where someone has been assigned a random middle name recently, for no apparent reason.
One problem with these databases that Ancestry makes up, similar to "North Carolina, Birth and Death Indexes, 1800-2000," is that people cite them because they look legitimate, but sometimes they’re just a collection of online family trees (i.e. rumors). And so often when you cut through to the original underlying source, if any, it doesn’t say what it’s being cited for.
I would remove the middle name from John White (b. 1768) and let anyone who has some primary documentation (e.g. birth or death certificate, census record, marriage or military record etc.) specifically pertaining to him, which shows his middle name, attach their source before adding a middle name to him.
Best wishes.
