Centenarian is link to Clara Barton; Family home is filled with history.

Byline: Ellie Oleson

OXFORD - For one local centenarian, Clara Barton is not only the historical figure who changed the world as the "angel of the battlefield" and founder of the American Red Cross. She is also Great-great-aunt Clara.

May Olney White, the great-great-niece of Clara Barton, has only one enduring personal memory of her famous aunt.

"I was 4 years old in 1912, when my mother took me and my sister Helen to Aunt Clara's house on Charlton Street to help take care of her for the day. She was a very small woman in a great big bed in a very big house. She let us go up to the widow's walk and play. She was so glad we came," Mrs. White said.

Clara Barton died later that year in Glen Echo, Md. She never married or had any children, but left a strong family legacy, which began as she started her nursing career at age 11, when her brother fell from a rafter in a barn.

"My great-great-grandfather David (Barton) was Clara's older brother. She took care of him when he got injured on the farm," Mrs. White said.

"The farm," at 66 Clara Barton Road in North Oxford, is where Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on Christmas Day 1821. The original farmhouse has been restored as the Clara Barton Birthplace Museum and the farm has become the Barton Center for Diabetes Education.

Years after David's accident and after Ms. Barton had made a name for herself on the Civil War's bloody battlefields, she traveled to Europe to convalesce, but instead worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross and aided the wounded during the Franco-Prussian War.

Mrs. White said, "My grandmother, Mary Ann Barton Stafford, David's daughter, was 16 and living in North Oxford after Clara did her soldier business. Clara sent for Mary to come to Paris. Mary was deaf, but she was a talker and she was very artistic."

Mary traveled to New York, where a wine importer-exporter who knew Ms. Barton helped Mary cross the ocean.

"She sailed on that ship for four or five weeks. There she was, just 16, and she had a fresh bottle of wine at every meal," Mrs. White said with a chuckle.

For the next three years, Mary attended school in Paris, where she lived with her Aunt Clara. The pair later moved to Washington, D.C., where Mary worked for the Treasury Department.

"She said she and all the ladies were frisked through eight layers of petticoats whenever they left the building," Mrs. White said.

Mary later returned to Oxford and married John Stafford. Their daughter, Anna Gertrude Stafford, married Guy W. Olney, who worked for Howard Brothers, an Oxford firm that made cards for combing wool. The Olneys and their daughters, May and Helen, moved to Mrs. White's current home on Main Street.

"This house was built in 1849 and my family came to it in 1890. I have lived in it since 1929, when my grandmother died. It's loaded with stuff. I'm the last of my generation," Mrs. White said.

Her warm and inviting home is like a museum, filled with historical maps, photographs, furniture, paintings and books detailing the history of Oxford, Clara Barton and a fascinating family, which includes Oxford native Richard Olney, who was secretary of state and attorney general under President Grover Cleveland.

Mrs. White met her husband, former track star Raymond Earl White, at Oxford High School. They both graduated from the school in 1926.

Mr. White went on to the University of Maine, then ran the Conservation Corps in Sturbridge and later in Holyoke during the Great Depression.

"It was a bad time. We were lucky to have jobs. After high school, I went to Fairchild's Office School, which is now the Salter School; then I worked at State Mutual for nine years. I was the only young person I knew working. It was awful. No one had any money," Mrs. White said.

She and Mr. White married in 1937 and had two children: retired art teacher Raymond Olney White, who coaches track at Leicester High School, and Stephen Barton White, who instructs golf in Sugarloaf, Maine. Mrs. White has four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Her husband worked as a sales engineer until he retired and bought the Klondike Restaurant in North Grafton. He died four years ago, when he was 95.

Mrs. White was born on July 8, 1908, and yesterday celebrated her 100th birthday with a visit to Town Hall, where selectmen honored her with a centenarian's cane and proclaimed yesterday "May Olney White Day."

Selectman John G. Saad, who also celebrated his birthday yesterday, said he was proud to share his birthday with Mrs. White and with the town of Oxford, which turned 295 yesterday.

"That is fitting, since Oxford has always been your first love," he said.

Mrs. White looks and sounds decades younger than her age and credits a healthy diet, including chocolate pudding, for her long life.

"I feel good. I eat right. I live on milk, eggs, potatoes, vegetables and fruit and chocolate pudding, which I love and have had all my life."

She served many years on the Oxford Historical Commission and the Huguenot Society of Oxford and has donated a variety of irreplaceable family treasures to the Clara Barton Birthplace Museum.

Mrs. White said, "My parents loved history. So do I. And I love Oxford. I enjoy riding around on the streets. They are the same, except they're macadam instead of dirt. We should always preserve this as our country town."

She thanked townspeople for remembering her birthday, both at the selectmen's meeting and earlier in the day at the Barton museum, where a party was held in her honor.

"Imagine having all these parties in one day," she said, "I can't believe it. This is quite an honor. I want to thank the officials for keeping Oxford a good place to live."

ART: PHOTO

CUTLINE: May Olney White, the great-great-niece of Clara Barton, celebrated her 100th birthday yesterday.

PHOTOG: T&G Staff/CHRISTINE PETERSON