The first owner of the Newbold-White House property was a Quaker named Joseph Scott. Scott was one of the few Carolinians named in George Fox's Journal, where Fox notes that he preached at Scott's house near the Perquimans River in 1672. Scott's neighbors founded one of North Carolina's first organized churches, the Perquimans Monthly Meeting of Friends. When Scott died in 1685, he left instructions for the "Body of People called Quakers" to help settle his estate.