Diaries of Mary Hawthorne Bunker, 1886-1946

Mary Hawthorne White was born on October 26, 1869, in Needham, Massachusetts, the only daughter of Judge George White and Frances Mary Edwena Noyes. She attended Newton High School for one year and then was tutored for several years by the author, Gamaliel Bradford. Mary Hawthorne White graduated from Radcliffe, magna cum laude in English and Greek with the first class to receive Radcliffe degrees in 1894. In June 1897, she married Clarence Alfred Bunker, a lawyer, and they had three children, all of whom attended Harvard or Radcliffe.

Mary Hawthorne White Bunker was a member of the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association, serving as her class secretary from 1929. She prepared and published a history of the class of 1894 in 1952. She was involved in the College Club (Boston, Massachusetts), and was active in the Wellesley Women's Club, Wellesley Council, and was one of the organizers of the Wellesley Historical Society (Wellesley, Massachusetts). In addition, she was involved in the Wellesley Society of Artists, the Wellesley Red Cross, the Consumer's League of Massachusetts, the Nantucket Historical Association, and the American Unitarian Association. She was also the organizer of the first Girl Scout troop in Wellesley, and in 1948 the Wellesley Girl Scout Day Camp was named after her in honor of her work. At the time of her death in 1960, Mary Hawthorne White Bunker was assistant registrar of the Council and a Golden Eagle of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America.