Joseph Whitaker (March 29, 1789 – November 30, 1870) was an American industrialist, landowner, and legislator in the

Phoenixville Phoenixville is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia at the junction of French Creek (Schuylkill River tributary), French Creek an ...

and Mont Clare area of

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, during the 19th century. He was a member of the

Whitaker iron family During the 19th and 20th centuries, several members of the Whitaker family and related families made important contributions to the American iron and steel industry. First generation * Joseph Whitaker I (1755–1838) was the son of a Leeds cloth ...

Early life

Joseph Whitaker was born on March 29, 1789. He attended a night school for a short time.

Career

Until 1846, Whitaker was the

ironmaster An ironmaster is the manager, and usually owner, of a forge or blast furnace for the processing of iron. It is a term mainly associated with the period of the Industrial Revolution, especially in Great Britain. The ironmaster was usually a larg ...

and an owner of the Phoenix Iron Works, the major industry in

. He was elected by the Whigs to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1843, where he served one term. He was responsible for having the first

Mont Clare Bridge The Mont Clare Bridge (also Phoenixville–Mont Clare Bridge) is a crossing of the Schuylkill River between Mont Clare, Pennsylvania, Mont Clare and Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, Phoenixville in Pennsylvania, USA. The bridge was also referred to a ...

constructed in 1844. His 1846 estate was named ''Mont Clare'', and eventually lent its name to the village of Mont Clare. In 1836 Joseph, his brother George Price Whitaker, and some partners purchased the

Principio Furnace Principio Furnace and village is in Cecil County, Maryland, 4 miles (6.4 km) northeast of Havre de Grace. The Principio Iron Works were started here in 1719 by Joseph Farmer with British capital and an ironmaster, John England. By the 1740s ...

in Maryland and revived ironmaking there. Before the Civil War the Whitakers divided their holdings geographically, with Joseph receiving the Pennsylvania properties and George Price the Maryland and Virginia ones. George Price Whitaker and his descendants continued to be involved in the iron and steel business; their holdings eventually became part of the Wheeling Steel Company in 1921, later

Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel was a steel manufacturer based in Wheeling, West Virginia. Operations The company owned the following factories, all of which are between Benwood, West Virginia, and Steubenville, Ohio. * Ackermann Works at Wheeling, wh ...

Personal life

Joseph married Grace Adams (1789–1870) of

Swedesboro, New Jersey Swedesboro is a borough within Gloucester County in the U.S. state of New Jersey, within the Philadelphia metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 2,711, its highest decennial count ever and an inc ...

, on April 28, 1811. They had a daughter, Anna Maria, who married Isaac A. Pennypacker in 1839. Anna and Isaac's eldest son was Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker; a judge, historian, and the first 20th century

Governor of Pennsylvania The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

. When Isaac died in 1856, Anna and her children, including Samuel, came back to live in ''Mont Clare'' with Joseph. Another of Joseph and Grace's children, Gertrude (1830-1914), married Rev. Charles Impey Thompson (1819-1883); their son

Joseph Whitaker Thompson Joseph Whitaker Thompson (August 19, 1861 – January 7, 1946) was a United States federal judge, United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and previously was a United States district judge of the Uni ...

(1861-1946) was a

United States federal judge In the United States, a federal judge is a judge who serves on a court established under Article Three of the U.S. Constitution. Often called "Article III judges", federal judges include the chief justice and associate justices of the U.S. S ...

at the circuit and district court levels. Joseph is the great-great-great-grandfather of American filmmaker, actor, writer, and artist

John Waters John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including '' Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), '' Pink Flamingos'' (1972) and '' Fe ...

(born April 22, 1946). Whitaker died of a heart attack on November 30, 1870, at his Mont Clare home.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Whitaker, Joseph 1789 births 1870 deaths 19th-century American businesspeople American industrialists Businesspeople from Pennsylvania Members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Pennsylvania Whigs People from Chester County, Pennsylvania Whitaker family (ironmaking) 19th-century members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly