He despised Joseph Knapp, who had worked for him, labeling him a “lazy, cowardly, fortune hunter.” When his young grandniece Mary married Knapp without White’s consent, she was disinherited and Knapp was fired from his position. He was a tyrant to his family, given to changing his will and using the prospect of inheriting his large fortune as a weapon to keep family members in line. The captain was not a beloved elderly family member. Beckford that he had changed his will, which was not a surprise. Knapp.Ĭaptain White had recently told Mrs. Beckford’s daughter, also named Mary, lived a short distance away in the town of Wenham and was married to Captain White's grandnephew, Joseph J. White lived in a distinguished landmark house in Salem with Benjamin White, a distant relative and house handyman Lydia Kimball, a domestic servant and Mary Beckford, his housekeeper niece. Illustration of the murder of Captain Joseph White.Ī brutal crime in Salem, Massachusetts inspired author Edgar Allan Poe to write his famous psychological murder mystery, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” On the evening of April 6, 1830, the murder of 82-year-old Captain Joseph White, a wealthy retired shipmaster and trader, shocked the residents of the small town of Salem.
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