The White family of Middlebury – Part I

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

The 28-room White mansion was the summer home of William Henry and Elizabeth White. It was built in 1914 at the peak of Breakneck Hill Road in Middlebury and was demolished in 1954. (Middlebury Historical Society photo)

The White mansion, the 28-room summer home of William Henry (1876-1952) and Elizabeth (Wade) White (1878-1949), which they built in 1914, stood at the peak of Breakneck Hill Road in Middlebury. Surrounded by beautifully designed gardens, it still is remembered by some residents who got to admire it before its demolition in 1954.

The family lived on Prospect Street in Waterbury during the rest of the year. The former home of Martha Chase (Starkweather) Wade (Elizabeth’s mother and the wife of Henry Lawton Wade) still stands on Artillery Road (it was called “The Patch”). The White family gardener, George Worgan (1890-1968) and his wife, Margaret, lived in another extant house on Breakneck Hill.

The histories and genealogies of the Whites and many other families related to them are delightfully and expertly told in Peter Haring Judd’s “More Lasting than Brass,” a marvelous account of families, industries and life in the greater Waterbury area, including Middlebury. William Jamieson Pape’s “History of Waterbury and the Naugatuck Valley,” another wealth of local family information tells us that William Henry White’s grandfather, Luther Chapin White (1821-1893), was an owner of businesses in Waterbury, including White and Wells and the L. C. White Co., which made buttons, upholstering nails and button part novelties and employed about 100 people,

The White and Wells Co. made straw board. William’s father, George Luther White (1852-1914), became president of the company in the 1890s, and the company subsequently expanded into other paper products, including twine and boxes. The company had offices on Bank Street in Waterbury and factories in Waterbury and Southbury, among other locations.

William Henry White (1876-1952) was married to Mary Elizabeth Wade (1878-1949) and they had two children, Elizabeth Wade “Betty” White (1906-1994) and Henry Wade White (1909-1995). Daughter Betty graduated from Westover School and lived her later years in “The Patch” on Artillery Road. Betty led a fascinating life as an author, poet and social activist and wrote a biography (1970) of Anne Bradstreet, the first poet in the English-speaking new world.

Betty moved to New York for a while and became a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal, which thoroughly shocked her family. She flirted with communism and socialism and became a member of the Progressive Party, supporting Henry Wallace for president in 1948. The historical society’s Benson Scrapbooks describe how, in 1937, Betty, Middleburian Donald Stevens and two others had lunch at Hyde Park with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Betty was chair of the local committee of the Spanish Child Feeding Mission carried on by the American Friends Service Committee, served also by Stevens, a cause in which Mrs. Roosevelt was interested.

The scrapbooks contain an article from earlier that year about how Betty was able to speak by telephone from England to Leon Campbell Jr. of The American’s newspaper city room after she witnessed the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey. The King had ascended to the throne after his brother, King Edward VIII, had abdicated. It went on to describe how in 1937 it took 10 minutes to set up an international call such as this one. The call cost $21 (plus $2 tax), which was an improvement over conditions 10 years earlier when the service was begun and such a call cost $75.

Learn more about the White family in our September issue.

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.