Joseph George L. Crocker was born on June 29, 1850, near Seaboard, North Carolina. Crocker was a merchant in the Seaboard community of Northampton County who served as county treasurer (16 years), chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, and president of the Farmers' Bank of Seaboard (1907-1920). He contracted tuberculosis in 1916, from which disease he died on January 21, 1920.