In the early 1990s, Pamela Dishongh, who was conducting a survey of the Riverdale Historic District in eastern Knox County for its inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, discovered what was believed to have been White's first cabin (1785) in Knox County on the front lawn of the McNutt-Campbell-Kennedy House. A subsequent archaeological survey of the site led by University of Tennessee archaeologist Charles Faulkner confirmed the cabin was probably built by White. Faulkner suggests the cabin was a very simple log structure meant to provide temporary shelter.