Joel White

Joel White's personal and family background and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre

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Joel William White

1831-1914

Biographical Sketch

Early LIfe in Pennsylvania and Illinois

Joel William White came from solid New England Puritan roots. From Massachusetts, his parents moved with their growing family to the western Adirondack Mountains in northern New York, then to northwestern Pennsylvania in Erie County. There in 1831, Joel William White was born in the town of Erie on the southern shore of Lake Erie.

Around 1837, his family joined the Mormons. In the early 1840s, they moved to Nauvoo, Illinois.

Migration to Utah

In 1846, the White family joined the westering Mormon exodus from Illinois. In the spring of 1850, nineteen-year-old White married seventeen-year-old Frances Ann Thomas, a native of North Carolina.

In 1850, the families of Joel White and his brothers, John and Samuel D. White, immigrated to the valley of the Great Salt Lake in the company of Aaron Johnson.

Pioneering in Utah Valley

At the urging of David Savage, Joel White's brother-in-law, they traveled south to Utah Valley to a promising new area north of Utah Lake. They were among its original founders. Originally called Evansville, it was later named Lehi. Another group of new arrivals included William Sears Riggs, who would later move with the Whites to Cedar City. Using the beginnings of a crude sawmill and with much difficulty, they constructed among the first log homes in Lehi. White is credited with a few lines of verse describing the difficulties:

          "Of logs we built our houses,

               Of shakies made the doors,

          Of sod we built the chimneys,

              Dirt we had for floors.

          However, we did have a new broom everyday,

              A fresh stick of sagebrush was used, then

          Chucked into the fireplace." (Huff, Utah County Centennial History, 235; Gardner, History of Lehi, 19 (shorter version).)

Joel and Samuel White, Charles Hopkins and William Riggs were among the initial group of settlers who built the first cabins to form three sides of a fort on Snow Springs. The "fort" enclosed the spring but in the early years there were insufficient settlers to build the cabins along the fourth wall to make an enclosure. 

But when the Walker War commenced in 1853, the community was forced to "fort up." White was among those in the new fort.

To Cedar City and the Ironworks

The early ironworks in Cedar City.

In 1853, White and his wife followed White's older brothers, John and Samuel, to southern Utah, settling in and around Cedar City. In 1856, Beaver was founded in the future Beaver County, 100 miles to the north. Joel W. White was one of three selectmen for the inaugural term of 1856-57. Evidently, however, White spent only a portion of his time in the new settlement; the balance he spent in Cedar City.

In the Iron Military District: Captain Joel White D, Isaac Haight's Battalion, Cedar City

White was 1st lieutenant in a platoon in Company D when, in the summer of 1857, he was promoted to captain of one of two companies in Isaac C. Haight's 2nd Battalion. See A Basic Account for a full description of the massacre.

In early September 1857, 26-year-old Joel White and Philip Klingensmith carried an express from Cedar City to the nearby village of Pinto, ahead of the Arkansas wagon train.

Joel White was also part of the Cedar City detachment sent to the Mountain Meadows. He probably arrived early in the week. Ellott Willden maintained that on Monday or Tuesday evening, White was on patrol with William Stewart when they encountered two or three men from the emigrant camp. Stewart shot and killed Tennessean William Aden. White shot at the other men but one of the riders escaped and beat a safe retreat to the emigrant camp at the south end of Mountain Meadows.

John D. Lee mentions Joel White several times in his account of the massacre. However, at the war council on Thursday evening, September 10, which many of the Cedar City men attended, Lee did not list White among the participants.

On Friday the 11th, White was among the militia escort alongside the Arkansas men marching away from the emigrant camp. He later testified in the trial of John D. Lee that he was unarmed and did not fire on the emigrants. But years later, Ellott Willden said that at the time of the massacre, some of the militiamen fired into the air rather than shoot the emigrant beside them. This allowed several emigrant men to attempt an escape. Per Ellott Willden, Joel White and William "Bill" Stewart ran after and shot the escaping emigrants. They were nearly shot themselves by their fellow militiamen in the confusion.

In 1859, White was among the many militiamen named in the arrest warrant issued by Judge John Cradlebaugh.

Leaving Cedar City for Northern Utah

Around 1859 the Joel White family, then with four children, departed southern Utah, going first to American Fork and then moving west to Cedar Fort in western Utah County.

Moving to Kingston, Piute County

Then after nearly a decade and a half in Utah County, the White family moved to the new settlement of Kingston, east of Circleville on the eastern fork of the Sevier River in Piute County. In 1877, White served as vice-president of the Kingston United Order but, following dissension in the order in 1879, White and family moved north to Plain City in Weber County.

Witness at Both Trials of John D. Lee

During the Lee trials of 1875-76, White testified in both trials, the only witness to do so. Like Philip Klingensmith, White confirmed that he, accompanied by Klingensmith, carried expresses to Pinto and encountered John D. Lee while en route. Although there are discrepancies between their two accounts, they also corroborate one another on important particulars.

Final Years

By 1900, White and wife Frances had moved north to Brigham City in Box Elder County. To that point White had pursued farming as his primary occupation but the 1900 census lists White as a machinist. He and his wife remained in Brigham City. He died in 1914, his wife, in 1918, and both were buried there. The Whites had nine children, all of whom survived into the twentieth century.

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References

Bagley, Blood of the Prophets, 100, 110, 128, 133, 146, 149, 184, 304, 318; Bigler and Bagley, Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives, 70 fn. 14, 235, 306, 307, 314, 341, 344-45, 399, 411, 416, 456; Bradley, A History of Beaver County; FamilySearch.org; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee, 113 115, 215, 216, 217; Gardner, History of Lehi, 13, 14 (photo), 15, 68; Huff, Utah County Centennial History, 234, 235, 236; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 217, 230, 235, 250, 274, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; Merkley, ed., Monuments to Courage, 172, 177, Newell, A History of Piute County,126, 132; Turley and Walker, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: Jenson and Morris Collections,150, 160, 202, 209; U.S. Census for 1900; Van Wagoner, Lehi: Portraits of a Utah Town, 3; 5; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows,141, 157, 159, 163-64, 167, 173, 200, 216, 254, Appendix C, 263-64; Warner, Grass Valley, 9, 10, 14.

For full bibliographic information see Bibliography.

External Links

For additional information on Joel White, see:

• http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
• Deseret Iron Company Account Book, 1854-1867: http://www.footnote.com/document/241905844/

Further information and confirmation needed. Please contact editor@1857ironcountymilitia.com.