White Mills was more than a center of glass and glassmaking, as immigrants and their descendants built an active, vital community sustained by shared experience through good times and bad, with worship, patriotism, entertainment, sports, education, commerce, and a strong work ethic shaping local life. Christian Dorflinger completed seven sloped-roofed houses in early 1867 for workers at his nearby glass factory, then within fewer than two years thirty-three more houses were built in White Mills for 182 employees and their families. One 1867 Glassworker's House, later restored to its 1875 condition, became a catalyst for historic preservation in White Mills when Dr. Walter Barbe purchased it in 2001 to preserve it. Baseball was a major part of community life, and in 1907 Eddie Murphy, a right fielder on the White Mills team managed by John C. Dorflinger, later reached the 1913 World Series with Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. His former friends in White Mills created a regulation-size cut-glass bat for him, recorded in the diary of Louis J. Dorflinger with the costs of cutting, glass, and case, and although Governor John K. Tener was to present it, official business prevented him from doing so, so John C. Dorflinger made the gift instead. Education also grew with the town: a school built about 1850 in Palmyra Township for the children of Farnham's Saw Mills employees became too small after Dorflinger established his glassworks in White Mills in 1865, so he built another school around 1870 in Texas Township, and both schools were replaced in 1900 by a brick building constructed in 1899 on School Street that survives as a private residence.