Joel White
Joel White's personal and family background and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre
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 and then continued onto a promising new area in central Utah. 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 Sears 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
In 1853, White and his wife followed White's older brothers, John and Samuel, to southern Utah, settling in and around 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. 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.
Next, White was part of the Cedar City detachment sent to the Mountain Meadows during the week of the 7th.
On Friday the 11th, White was among the militia escort alongside the Arkansas men marching away from the emigrant camp. He later maintained that he was unarmed and did not fire on the emigrants. However, Ellott Willden later said that at the time of the massacre on September 11, 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, White and William Stewart ran after the escaping emigrants and were nearly shot by their fellow militiamen in the confusion.
Willden also maintained that earlier in the week, White had been on patrol with William Stewart when they encountered two men from the emigrant camp. Stewart shot and killed Tennessean William Aden. White shot at the other man but he (the emigrant) escaped and beat a retreat to their camp at the south end of Mountain Meadows.
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.
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.
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; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled,217, 230, 235, 250, 274, 380; Lee Trial transcripts; 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; 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. See Bibliography.
External Links
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