Farmer and stock dealer who lived in a 'handsome brick residence' which was built in 1849-50 on his farm in Haw Creek Township. The brick used for construction of the residence was made and fired in a kiln on site. This structure, though much altered, has survived.

Joseph was brought to Bartholomew County from Montgomery County, Kentucky at the age of ten by his parents, John and Elizabeth Sidener, who settled on a farm in Haw Creek Township. On January 2, 1841 in Bartholomew County he married his first wife Florina Louise Spaugh, by whom he was the father of ten daughters and a son, Louisa, Catherine, Martha, Harriet, Rachel, Mary, Polly, Sarah, twins Clementine and Adaline, and Joseph Dawson. On August 31, 1862 he married his second wife Martha Jane Trotter, by whom he was the father of six more children, Lillie, Ida, John, Annie, Lettie, and Jay Dee.

In September 1859 Thomas Essex and seventeen others petitioned the Bartholomew County Board of Commissioners for the location of a public highway through the Haw Creek area, which in 1860 was laid out and marked by three reviewers. Joseph remonstrated against the opening of the highway which was to run through his land and cause him damages, leading to the 1864 case 'Sidener v. Essex et al' in the Supreme Court of Indiana. Joseph testified that "the contemplated highway would run through his farm from east to west on the line between two sections, and through a lane which is closed up at each end; that the portion of his farm on the north side of the lane was fenced off into fields running north and south; that in the north-west corner of the farm there is a spring of unfailing water for stock, and that he had his fields so arranged that he could turn his stock from any field into the lane, from whence the stock could go to the water; that on the south side of the farm there is a small branch, but it is always dry during the dry seasons of the year, and he watered his stock on that part of the farm by turning them into the lane; that there was no stock water on the farm other than the above; and that he had arranged his farm in part for a stock farm, and dealt considerably in stock." The court refused his evidence against which he sought $500 in damages, but was only awarded $25.

In an 1868 federal case 'Sidener v. Klier' Joseph and Bernhard Klier disputed over a claim to who had right to the bankrupted estate of Ernest Degelow. In an 1887 case 'May v. Hoover' Joseph's son-in-law William J. May continued a dispute Joseph had begun in 1882 against Hoover & Company due to an 'Excelsior Harvester and Binder' not functioning as guaranteed and thereby breaking its warranty.

[Biography based on the research of Joseph's 3rd-great-grandson, Todd Whitesides.]