Bouck White - Later Life

Later Life

White left for Europe, to either learn more about pottery-making or as a war correspondent, and married Andree Emilie Simon, a 19-year-old girl he brought back to his primitive home in Marlboro, Ulster County, NY. Because he mistreated her, the local residents tarred and feathered him. The marriage was annulled and White left for Vermont in the summer of 1921. He eventually moved to New Scotland, Albany County, NY in the Helderberg Mountains area, and with the help of two Swedish brothers, he built by hand a primitive castle out of local limestone in the mid 1930s. He referred to his buildings as "Federalburg" and "The Spirit of the Helderbergs," but local residents called it the "Helderberg Castle." He made a living selling "Bouckware" pottery with a new glazing technique that required no heat. Fire destroyed his living quarters at the castle in 1940, and in 1944 White suffered a stroke that forced him to enter the Home for Aged Men in Menands where he died in 1951.

"Bouck White drifted through the Methodist Episcopal ministry, the Congregational ministry, and a stint as an Episcopalian lay youth worker, before founding the Church of the Social Revolution and exasperating all socialist and ecclesiastical organizations he encountered, before descending into notorious eccentricities in the mountains outside Albany, New York."