Joel White
Joel White's background and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Life
Name: Joel William White
Lived: 1831-1914
Biographical Sketch
Joel W. 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 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 and in 1846, 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.
The Whites immigrated to Utah in 1850 and were among the original founder of Lehi in central Utah. Then in 1853, White and his wife followed White's older brothers, John and Samuel, to southern Utah, settling in and around Cedar City. White was 1st lieutenant in a platoon in Company D when, in the summer of 1857, he was promoted to captain of the company.
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.
During the trials of John D. Lee in 1875-76, White testified in both trials, the only witness to do so. 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.
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.
Captain Joel White, Company D, 2nd Battalion, Cedar City
His Role and Statements Relative to the Massacre
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 train. White was part of the 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 escaped and beat a retreat to the emigrant 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.
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.
References
1900 U.S. Census; Bradley, History of Beaver County; FamilySearch.org; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee; Gardner, History of Lehi, 13-14; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled; Lee Trial transcripts; Newell, History of Piute County; Turley and Walker, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: Jenson and Morris Collections, 150, 160, 202, 209; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C.
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