Dynamic duo of carriages: ‘Buckboard King’ dies in 1916

This is the first in an occasional series of posts about the Joubert & White carriage company on Warren Street in Glens Falls, which operated at the building that is now the Warren Street Square apartment and office complex..

J. Huyler White, partner in the Joubert & White carriage company, died at 7 a.m. July 2, 1916, just days into his octogenarian decade.

“He celebrated his eightieth birthday last Thursday and in observance of the event traveled to the Halfway House with a party of relatives and enjoyed dinner,” The Post-Star reported on July 3, 1916. “He passed a part of Friday evening in the business center and received the congratulations of friends, many of whom declared that he was more active than the average man of ten years his junior.”

White was known the world over.

“During thirty years he traveled about the country selling the Joubert & White buckboard and achieved such success that he was given the title of ‘Buckboard King.’ He sold wagons to many of the richest men in the United States and to many noblemen of Europe.”

White and Edward Joubert worked together in a local carriage shop when they borrowed $50 for capital to launch the partnership, which would grow to have sales of more than $50,000 annually.

When the partnership was settled, $100,000 — the equivalent of about $2.3 million in 2019 dollars — in remaining assets was divided between White and the heirs of Joubert, who had died a few years earlier.

White grew up poor and rose to prominence, The Post-Star noted in a separate editorial.

“In his life was much of the shadow, but more of the son. His troubled never embittered his nature, and to the last he was the kindly, lovable man in his youth.”