Joseph FAULkner

1846-1899
Hometown: Bath, Steuben County, New York

A childhood friend of Charley Brother, Faulkner took up the trade as a printer before the Civil War. Just as his pals were enlisting for the war, he had a misstep at his work and fell over 30 feet down, setting him to bed to put himself back together.

He later joined the 107th New York Volunteers, enlisting in Elmira, mustering in as a corporal with Company D on July 25, 1862.

He was wounded in action on May 25, 1864, and mustered out with his company on June 5, 1865, near Washington, DC.

Faulkner was the son of Daniel and Caroline Faulkner and the grandson of Maj. Daniel, founder of Dansville, NY, about 30 miles west of Bath.

When Faulkner was about age three or four, his father died, leaving his mother to raise him with his five sisters, including his twin, Joan, and one brother, William.

According to the Presbyterian Church records in Bath, Charley Brother’s maternal grandmother—Rebecca Turner Pratt (born in Ireland)—was a member of this church since 1804 and knew Faulkner’s grandmother Catherine, who joined the church between 1811 and 1814.

Faulkner suffered from several illnesses. In May 1864 he was shot in the hip and sent to a hospital. It might have been there when he caught smallpox, which caused blindness in one eye and most of the other.

Even in this condition, he wanted more adventure and get out of Bath. After the war he went to sea as a whaler.

In 1877 his sister Maria, a teacher, encouraged him to publish his account in the whaling business as a way to generate income because he was blind. His memoir Eighteen Months on a Greenland Whaler was published in 1878.