White, Gideon

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Mary M. Harvey, “WHITE, GIDEON,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 6, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/white_gideon_6E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Jp, merchant, office holder, politician, militia officer, and judge; b. March 1753 in Plymouth, Mass., son of Captain Gideon White, yeoman, and Joanna Howland, both descendants of Pilgrim Fathers; cousin of Edward Winslow; m. 17 April 1787 Deborah Whitworth, daughter of Dr Miles Whitworth of Boston, in Shelburne, N.S., and they had nine children, all of whom lived to adulthood; d. there 30 Sept. 1833.
    • Ten days after the battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775 Gideon White was relatied his eyewitness account of that engagement. Because his movements during the next several months are unknown it is not certain whether he was the Gideon White who joined the evacuation of Boston in March 1776. By the summer, however, White was in Nova Scotia once more, and that September was captured by an American privateer off Barrington and taken to Massachusetts. Imprisoned and then placed under house arrest in Plymouth, in October 1777 he returned to Nova Scotia where he spent the winter of 1777–78 in Liverpool. By September 1779 he was in New York, and as master of the schooner Apollo traded in the Caribbean for a year. White then set up business as a merchant in Charleston, S.C., where he also served as a captain in the local militia prior to returning to New York in July 1782. By now a captain in the Duke of Cumberland’s Regiment, he went to Jamaica to recruit, but with the end of hostilities in sight the recruits were not needed, and he returned to New York in the late fall to await evacuation.
    • Appointment by Governor John Parr as justice of the peace for Halifax County in May 1784. In Shelburne, White was granted a 50-acre lot and a town lot. He seems to have been quite optimistic about the future of the town, stating, “It is dam’d hard’ tho in the Course of a few years it will be very Eligible. . . . And business will soon be sprightly. the Whale and Cod fishys are now attended too.” In spite of the area’s rocky terrain White managed to produce an income from a surplus of farm produce with the help of eight black families who worked as tenant farmers. White’s main source of capital, however, was his half pay as a British officer, which he received until his death.
    • Once established on his land, White procured numerous appointments. As a former ship’s master he fulfilled the duties of deputy registrar of the Vice-Admiralty Court. For a great many years he was a justice of the peace for Shelburne County. In 1790 he was elected to the House of Assembly for Barrington Township and served until 1793.
    • Gideon White made a significant contribution to Shelburne as a devoted public servant. He persevered under the difficult conditions in the late 1780s when Shelburne declined rapidly in importance; in the aftermath of the great fire of 1792, in which he lost much property, he remained in the town when many others were defeated and left. Perhaps his greatest contribution to early Nova Scotia history is his collection of personal papers, which describe his success in agriculture, his attempts to establish a school, the local efforts at fire-fighting, and the general social and cultural conditions of his lifetime.
  • Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=8979
  • Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/83827256/gideon-white