Joseph H. White, 1825/1828-1883

Headstone GPS Coordinates: Burial location unknown.

Birth:1825 or poss.1828, Strafford, Orange County, Vermont       

Death: 29 October 1883, Quilcene, Jefferson County, Washington

Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: None.

American Revolutionary War Patriots*: Joel White (Vermont)

Disclaimer: These lines have not been officially proven by NSDAR standard

Joseph H. White was born either in 1825 or 1828 to Ebenezer White and Mary (maiden name unknown) in Strafford, Orange County, Vermont. He was the last of his parents’ seven children, although two of his siblings had likely passed away before he was born.

Joseph grew up on his family’s farm in Vermont. Not much is known about his childhood or his early adult life. When he was thirty-five in 1860, he may have married an eighteen year old woman named Julia and lived in Milford, New Hampshire. 

There are soldiers listed on Civil War rosters from Vermont and New Hampshire named Joseph White who were born around 1825, but none of these men seem to be Joseph H. White who travelled out to the Washington Territory and settled in Quilcene Bay. 

Joseph was first mentioned living in Quilcene Bay around 1868 in Edward Clayson’s “Historical Narratives of Puget Sound and Hood’s Canal.” ‘Old Joe,” as he was called, lived in the isolated wilderness with a Native American woman named Catherine “Kate” Anderson who had children from a previous union. She was likely from the Clallam Tribe. Edward Clayson wrote that Joe used to be the “butt and ridicule” of everyone because he would advocate for a railroad to be built between Port Townsend and Quilcene Bay. Everyone thought he was delusional, but eventually the railroad line was established.

In the 1870 census, Joseph was listed living with Catherine whom he was not formally married to. At one point in 1880, he was listed living at his home with Catherine’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Anne, who had adopted Joseph’s surname. Catherine was living in Port Townsend with her sisters at that time. But on March 14th, 1882, Joseph and Catherine paddled across the Hood Canal in their canoe to Seabeck to be married by Justice of the Peace, Jacob Hauptly, at the Bay View Hotel. Edward Clayson and his wife Annie signed as witnesses. 

On October 29th, 1883, Joseph passed away at the age of fifty-eight from exposure or hypothermia after falling into the canal from his canoe. He was rescued, but left on the shore. According to Jacob Hauptly’s diaries, there was a hard frost that day. Joseph had managed to make it back to his home before he passed away. 

Joseph had not made out a will before he died. His wife Catherine worked with a Jefferson County lawyer to take the ownership of his estate. Joseph’s siblings– Silas S., Harvey, Hannah, and Olive – all wrote to the Jefferson County court that since Joseph had no heirs and their parents had passed away, that they were the rightful heirs of his estate. They did not believe he and Catherine were legally married. The court sided with Catherine for she and Joseph had been married the year prior. Catherine took hold of the estate, but had to pay back Joseph’s debts to several community members who had done work for him, and also to the Washington Mill Company. In Jacob Hauptly’s diaries, he noted that he purchased several cows from “Mrs. White.”

Joseph was laid to rest in the Seabeck cemetery, but his grave site’s location is unknown.