Elizabeth Wade White

The Wade and White families descended from the Puritans who migrated to New England in the 1630s.

The Whites were well-off and in addition to the Prospect Street house they owned a country house at Breakneck Hill, Middlebury, Connecticut (overlooking Waterbury, only 6 miles from Prospect Street), and another house at Bass Rocks, Gloucester, Massachusetts.

They also owned a house and shooting camp in Middleton, South Carolina, Strawberry Hill House, 30 miles north of Savannah, inherited by Henry Wade.

White attended Westover School in Middlebury.

Her maternal grandfather was Henry Lawton Wade (1842–1912), a stockholder of the Waterbury Clock Company who left $1.75 million ($0 in dollars) to his two daughters, Lucy and Mary, Elizabeth's mother.

Her paternal grandfather was George Luther White (1852–1914), one of the leading American paper box manufacturers and a stockholder of White & Wells and L.C. White Co. His estate amounted to half a million dollars which, at the time of his wife's death, Julia Phelps Haring (1852–1928), became $1.67 million ($0 in dollars).

Elizabeth Wade White was born at 107 Prospect Street, Waterbury, Connecticut, the first child of William Henry White (1876–1952) and Mary Elizabeth Wade (1878–1949).

In 1939 White met Evelyn Virginia Holahan (August 28, 1905 – May 27, 1985) and they later shared an apartment in Greenwich Village.

Holahan was originally from Rochester, New York, and moved to New York City to work at Benton & Bowles, an advertising agency.

Holahan's older sister was Elizabeth Holahan, a famous interior decorator with several historical restorations in New York State to her credit; her younger sister was aspiring actress Annie Holahan.

She met Ackland in Dorset, where Holahan arrived to retrieve her sister, who had followed Llewelyn Powys, British novelist and essayist, and Ackland's neighbor, to England.

From the correspondence between Holahan and Ackland, it appears that they were having an affair at the time.

Elizabeth Wade White (June 8, 1906 – December 11, 1994) was an American writer, poet, and activist.

She was a lover of Valentine Ackland and wrote The Life of Anne Bradstreet: The Tenth Muse, about the early American poet and first American writer to be published in the Thirteen Colonies.

White's closest female friend was Katherine Bullock (1908–1995), daughter of Calvin Bullock from Denver, who also attended Westover.

She had one brother, Henry Wade White (1909–1995).

After graduation, White made her debut into society in December 1925 at a reception given at the Waterbury Club; her dress gown was in white chiffon over silver with white fur trimming.

Early in 1927, White attended the Miss Risser's school in Rome together with her cousin, Helen "Henny" Chase Streeter, daughter of Edward Clark Streeter and Alice Chase, who later married John Bertram Whitelaw.

After Rome, White attended school in New York City to study sculpture.

In the 1930s, White supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal program.

She conducted investigations in industrial and mining towns to understand labor conditions there.

Her father did not approve of her support for Roosevelt.

In 1937, White with her brother Henry and their friend, George Heard Hamilton, attended the Coronation of George VI and Elizabeth.

In 1937, White moved to Dorset, England, ostensibly to conduct a research on Anne Bradstreet, an early American poet and the first American writer to be published in the Thirteen Colonies.

This was actually an excuse used with her family; her real intent was to meet English novelist and poet, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and her partner Valentine Ackland, and to join the American Friends Service Committee, a group that was providing relief workers to Spain.

Back in Connecticut, White had raised $1180 ($0 in dollars) for the Spanish Medical Aid Committee.

Between 1937 and 1938, White traveled many times to Spain, while her parents urged her to return to the United States.

White rented a house in Dorset and continued to support Spain's cause, also hosting refugees.

At the beginning of World War II, White went back to the United States, living in New York City and volunteering for the American Red Cross as an ambulance driver.

She also tried to raise awareness of the Russian War Relief effort.

For her support of the Soviets, White was excluded from her mother's will: Mary left everything to her son, and White's brother Henry, with the agreement that Henry was to be the manager of her sister's part of inheritance.

Henry did not share his mother's concerns, and as soon as possible, he passed the property of the "Patch", the house Mary had inherited from her own mother, and where White was living, to White, as well with her share of money.

Late in 1938, White had a nervous breakdown and spent the Christmas season at Ackland and Warner's home in Dorset; she later started a relationship with Ackland.

At the end of the 1940s, White joined and became active in the Progressive Party.

She was involved in the Communism movement, and was a supporter of the 1948 presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace.

In For Sylvia: An Honest Account (1949), Ackland tries to explain her affair with White; the relationship was brief, and Ackland spent the rest of her life with Townsend Warner.

White was a supporter of John Craske, a painter friend of Ackland.

For this reason she was in contact with Peter Pears, who was collecting Craske's works, and she donated her papers about the artists to the Aldeburgh Festival Archive.

They remained life-long friends and White was often a guest at the 18th-century Royalston, Massachusetts, houses Bullock's father bought and restored.

Bullock married Henry P. Cole from Denver, and White was the godmother of their first child.