The White family of Middlebury – Part II

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

This garden at the White family’s home in Middlebury was featured in Country Life. (Middlebury Historical Society photo)

Delia Bronson’s History of Middlebury (Middlebury Historical Society, 1992) tells how Betty White’s hobbies multiplied. She researched old books, bindings and printing; this led to an interest in early editions of children’s books, especially nursery rhymes. That search in this country and Europe led her to books about herbs, which in turn led to cultivation of an herb garden of over 100 varieties at her parents’ Middlebury home, a garden featured in an edition of Country Life. Betty’s rich prose style is evident in an article she wrote about herbs that is in Bronson’s history.

Betty moved to England in the 1930s to meet up with Sylvia Townsend Warner and her partner, the poet Mary Kathleen (“Valentine”) Ackland, and eventually became Ackland’s lover. Ackland’s reflections upon her relationship with Warner and her long affair with Betty were published posthumously in “For Sylvia: An Honest Account” (1985). Betty’s companion for many years was Evelyn Virginia Holahan (1905-1985), who lived with her at the Patch in Middlebury and is buried in the old Middlebury Cemetery.

Betty’s younger brother, Henry Wade (“Wade”) White (1909-1995), was an art historian, collector and connoisseur, according to his obituary in the Waterbury Republican-American, and was an oil painter in the Precisionist style. A graduate of Taft and Yale, his first show was at Waterbury’s Mattatuck Museum in 1927. He became the curator of fine arts at the Mattatuck from 1947 to 1953 and also served at the New England Conservatory. He became archivist at the Fogg Art Museum and served there for 17 years.

The White mansion was destined to have only an abbreviated 40-year existence, but the contributions of its occupants to Middlebury and beyond will live on.

Bob Rafford is the Middlebury Historical Society president and Middlebury’s municipal historian. To join or contact the society, visit MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or call Bob at 203-206-4717. Your membership would be a valuable addition.