Capt. Whitridge had ‘peculiarities’

Looking back continued on C2

Capt. Joseph Whitridge’s obituary in the Aug. 6, 1886, Springfield Globe-Republic includes details that seem a cross between something from the P.T. Barnum Musuem and Edgar Allan Poe. It tells us the one-time sea captain:

• was double-jointed throughout his body.

• had hands that were twice the size of ordinary people’s.

• in later years left notes on his fences asking passersby not to disturb the piles of wood shavings left by his incessant whittling.

Oh, and there’s this: The captain apparently had been storing his waiting coffin for a decade.

Seeking the sea

Born in New Bedford, Mass., on May 3, 1803, young Joseph moved to this area with his father, “Deacon” Whitridge, in 1809.

At 15, the boy bolted for the nearest significant body of water, working as an Ohio River boat hand.

“He made several trips to New Orleans, and when about 20 ... shipped on board a merchant vessel bound for Liverpool,” said the Globe-Republic.

After 13 years on the high seas, he married and settled in New Bedford, Mass. But having two children, he bolted again.

“One day, he made up a little bundle of clothes and without saying anything to anybody quietly left home and shipped on a whaler,” the paper said.

In five years, he “returned home as unexpectedly as he had left.”

A year later, the couple had another son.

After his first wife died, Whitridge married Miss Eleanor Bradford of Springfield. They had four children, two of whom “quietly sleep in their graves on the farm,” the obituary said.

The obituary reported other family news: A son from his first marriage had died in the Civil War and two others were living in Kansas and the Dakotas. Two children from his second marriage were local.

The obituary said the captain’s funeral was likely to be attended by “a vast concourse of people” because he was “universally respected ... as a man of sterling worth, correct morals and profound integrity of principles.”

Still, his “person peculiarities” were “numerous.”

Knot master

“He was a sailor to the end and never wore anything but a pair of sailor trousers,” it says.

“In knotting and tying ropes, he was astoundingly expert. In raising buildings, flag poles, etc., the captain’s services were always called into requisition, as he got forces, powers and results from combinations of ropes and pulleys that no one else ever dreamed of.”

He was a can-do man in other ways, too.

“During his active years ... he broke all his own colts. It was his custom as soon as the animal had reached the age of 2 to hitch it to a carriage and drive off .... Something in his iron will always subdued the colts.”

“Toward the last years of his life,” the paper added, “he became rather silent and reserved and spent most of his time whittling.”

Last rites

Still, the greatest oddities about Whitridge involved his preparations for death.

First, he stored a heavy slab of burr oak in his hay loft for 30 years without telling anyone it was for a coffin.

“Years of seasoning had made the oak hard as granite,” the story explained, so when it came time to make the coffin “two saws were broken in ‘ripping it.’ ”

“He also purchased a winding sheet, deposited it in the coffin and stowed it away in one of the dark rooms of his house.”

And there was more.

“Twelve years ago, he dug his vault, or grave, in a field near the house,” the story said, “and walled it up with brick and cement. The vault was filled with sand and covered with four immense slabs of sandstone fitted together. When the grave is needed Sunday, the sandstone will be removed and the sand scooped out.”

Then came the marker.

“He selected an enormous boulder, weighing seven tons, in the cut beyond the toll-gate east of the city. Two wagons broke down in conveying the ponderous stone.”

Disposition

The word disposition has two meanings. One involves personality and outlook. The other refers to how things, like bodies, are “disposed of” when the time comes.

Whether the Globe-Republic had both in mind in the final paragraph of Whitridge’s obituary isn’t clear but certainly seems fitting:

“The above instances of eccentricity give an insight into the disposition of one of the most striking characters and personalities in Ohio.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.