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The Baroness of Hobcaw

Photos 26Issue September 2013
With students in Hobcaw’s Strawberry Village, circa 1930The family’s stately brick Hobcaw House—which Bernard had rebuilt in 1929 after a fire destroyed the original wood home—on a bluff overlooking Winyah BayBernard Baruch, a successful Wall Street financier and advisor to seven U.S. presidents, in 1946Jumping her Anglo-Arabian Souriant ⁄⁄/ during a 1931 competition in Italy; the German cavalry team would later offer to purchase the prized horse for Hitler. Belle flatly refused.Fishing on the boardwalk to Clambake Landing in 1953The Baroness of HobcawThe Baruch children and other relatives gather on the porch of “Old Relick” in 1918.Belle with her pet Deary-Deer in 1963; the fawn had full run of the house and property at Bellefield Plantation, Belle’s home on Hobcaw Barony.Relaxing with friends, circa 1938, at the Grass Shack at Hobcaw Beach that her former companion Barbara Donohoe had designedAnnie Baruch with her year-old daughter, BelleWith her father in 1957Goofing around with friends at Hobcaw’s Clambake Landing hunt cabinBelle hunting at Hobcaw in 1913Aboard “Miladi” on Great South Bay in 1916. Belle went on to become the first woman to win a major race there.Isabelle Wilcox Baruch, the eldest of Bernard and Anne’s three children, at age five at her grandfather’s summer home in New JerseyAboard “Miladi” on Great South Bay in 1916. Belle went on to become the first woman to win a major race there.Belle with her father, Bernard, and their guests—Diana Churchill and her famous father, Winston—during a 1932 visit to Hobcaw BaronyBelle rides a motorcycle at the family’s rented summer estate in 1915Belle in 1918 working with the Women’s Radio Corps; she was appointed junior inspector and taught Morse code at two aviation camps.Belle volunteered for U.S. Naval Intelligence as a coastal observer from 1942 to ’44, looking out for U-boats along the Hobcaw coastline.Belle (pictured in fur coat and hat) with family and friends on the Hobcaw dock in 1935;Belle Baruch during a 1936 turkey hunt at her family’s 17,500-acre winter retreat, Hobcaw Barony, near Georgetown, South Carolina; (opposite) the Baruchs, circa 1905, with staff and guests on the porch of “Old Relick,” the original main home on the propertyWith Ella Severin, her companion from 1951 til Belle’s death in 1964In the cockpit on her first flight with friend and pilot Evangeline Johnson in 1916Belle at her airport hangar in Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1942; the U.S. Army commandeered it and her planes during World WarBelle’s one-time beau, Charles “Chita” Davila, the Romanian minister in Washington, D.C.

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