♪ [water sloshing gently] (female narrator) Belle Baruch hated poachers.

If she caught somebody hunting on her land or fishing in her creeks, she'd go after them with a vengeance.

She understood the value of her property, the plantation between the waters that the Indians called Hobcaw.

[engine whirring] [water sloshing] She was determined to preserve Hobcaw Barony, and she did.

My name is Lois Massey.

I'm the postmaster here at Pawleys Island now, but I wasn't always sorting mail.

For more than 20 years, I worked for Belle Baruch and her family at Hobcaw.

Folks around here had never met anyone quite like the Baruchs before.

They were as rich as Croesus and tall as pine trees.

But they saved a big, beautiful piece of the South Carolina coast from development right here in Georgetown County.

Without the Baruchs there would be no Hobcaw Barony.

♪ ♪ The Baruch family was full of contradictions.

Mrs. Baruch was an Episcopalian New Yorker.

♪ Bernard Baruch was from South Carolina, Jewish, and one of the most famous men of his day.

He made a fortune in the stock market and was a presidential adviser for over 40 years.

♪ Mr. and Mrs. Baruch had three children, but their oldest daughter, Belle, was Hobcaw's greatest champion.

♪ Belle's grandfather, Simon Baruch, came to Camden, South Carolina from Prussia in 1855.

South Carolina had one of the earliest and largest Jewish settlements in North America.

(female speaker) Simon Baruch had landsmen, had people from the same town he came from in East Prussia, living in Camden, the Baum family, and they took him in-- he was young, really a boy-- as a clerk in their store.

(Massey, dramatized) The Baum family helped Simon go to medical school.

In 1862, he became an assistant surgeon in the Confederate Army.

He set up field hospitals at important battlefields, including Gettysburg.

(Rosengarten) Simon Baruch had not so much as lanced a boil when he was sen to the battlefield as a surgeon.

But he had a clear sense of how important it was to keep things sanitary, so he washed his hands and his tools.

He sterilized his scalpel and was looked at as some kind of oddball for doing this.

He was an innovator in the medical field and continued to be his whole life.

(female speaker) At the close of the war, Simon Baruch returned to South Carolina, and married his South Carolina sweetheart, Isabelle Wolfe of Fairfield County, the Jewish daughter of cotton planters, of slave owners, and they lived in Camden and raised four boys.

The four sons were Hartwig, Bernard, Herman, and Sailing, and they lived in Camden until Bernard, the second-born was ten years old.

(Rosengarten) It was a marriage maybe not quite of social equals.

Simon Baruch was an immigrant, came from a respectable part of Europe.

Belle's family had been in the country for 150 years or more when Simon arrived.

This was as close to blue bloo as American Jews got.

(Massey, dramatized The violent years after the war were hard on the young family, and Simon Baruch had an awful secret.

(Rosengarten) Bernard Baruch tells in his memoir a story that happened when he was a child in Camden.

He and his older brother Hartwig were rummaging in a trunk in the attic and found their father Simon' gray uniform of the Confederacy and, underneath it, the flowing white robes of the KKK.

Simon Baruch had a very heroic Civil War history himself.

As a historian, it doesn't see unusual to me at all that he would be invited into what essentially was a vigilante group who wanted to try to keep peace, their own kind of peace, in the tumultuous years following the war.

(Brockington) The violence over and over during the Reconstruction era, in which he and his wife are raising children, was overwhelming.

(Massey, dramatized The last straw for Simon Baruch was when he was asked to be the medical doctor at the famous Cash-Shannon due in Camden.

[birds chirping] Colonel Shannon was shot, and Dr. Baruch couldn't save his life.

(Brockington) The effects and the aftermath of that duel led Simon Baruch to consider moving to New York, and together, the family went in 1881 when Bernard Baruch was just ten.

[wagons rattling] (Massey, dramatized) New York City became the Baruchs' adopted home.

Bernard entered th College of the City of New York when he was only 14.

Later on, when he was a famous, wealthy man, the school was renamed Baruch College in his honor.

When Mr. Baruch was about 20, he started working on Wall Street, and by the time he reached 30, he had made a fortune and launched his own firm.

(Baruch, dramatized) "I have a talent for making money.

"I have bought when things seemed low enough "and sol when things seemed high enough.

"In that way, I have managed to avoid being swept along "by those wild extremes of market fluctuations that seem so disastrous."

(female speaker He had a lot of energ and excitement and intelligence, and he was able to see the big financial picture that most of us really can't quite comprehend.

(Brockington) Before he was very well established, he noticed a woman named Anne Griffen of New York City.

♪ she was beautiful, and she had her own horse and carriage.

For a man on the way up, this was important information for him to gather.

They began courting in secret as much because he was of the Jewish faith and she was an Episcopalian, but also because of the fact that his job-- a speculator, a gambler on Wall Street-- was not what she thought her father would find appropriate.

(Rosengarten) Bernard Baruch called himself a Wall Street speculator, and I think he did that to deflect other people hurling that term at him.

But he was a Wall Street speculator and very successful.

(Brockington) They courted in Central Park, married and lived right in the city, and he continued his climb higher and higher on Wall Street.

By 25, he earned his first million, and by age 35, he was a millionaire several times over and was already giving money away as a philanthropist.

(Massey, dramatized Belle was Mr. and Mrs. Baruch' first child.

Born in 1899, she was delivere by her grandfather, Dr. Simon Baruch, and named after her grandmother, Isabelle.

(Brockington) She was welcomed as any millionaire's firstborn child would be.

She had everything she needed and everything she wanted.

(Miller) She was the only child and grandchild for quite a number of years, and she enjoyed that.

you know, a pony and a cart and riding lessons and many, many privileges.

♪ (Massey, dramatized) By 1905, Belle had a brother, Bernard Jr., and a sister named Renee.

Mr. and Mrs. Baruch raised their children Episcopalian, but they still felt the sting of anti-Semitism.

For one thing, the Chapin School in New York, an upper-class institution for girls, refused to admit their daughters, even though Mrs. Baruch had gone there herself.

For someone like Annie Griffith, a nice Episcopalian girl, to suddenly be the target of just unreasonable prejudice must have been especially difficult since it had an impact on her own children, although Baruch himself apparently never renounced the religion and was buried as a Jew.

But I think he felt grieved for his family and I think they probably felt the slings and arrows very pointedly.

♪ (Massey, dramatized) Mr. Baruch remembered the South fondly.

He felt less prejudice there than he did in New York City.

In 1904, friends invited him to the South Carolina coast to go hunting on some old rice plantations here on the Waccamaw Neck near Georgetown.

The rice fields weren't being cultivated anymore, but the land was beautiful and full of wild game.

Right away, Mr. Baruch wanted Hobcaw for himself.

(Brockington) He inquired about purchasing the property, and found out that Hobcaw was for sale.

He paid $3.15 an acre for what would become 17,500 acres, a number of plantations pieced back together again to re-create Hobcaw Barony, a colonial land grant.

Bernard Baruch was thrilled with the opportunity to have not only a hunting retreat, but also a winter home for his family.

(Massey, dramatized) Mr. and Mrs. Baruch first brought their children to Hobcaw when Belle was five years old.

From the beginning, she share her father's love for the place.

It was an enormous, endlessly fascinating playground.

♪ (Brockington) Two and a half miles of oceanfront property, 5,000 acres of salt marsh at the North Inlet Estuary, freshwater marsh in the form of abandoned rice fields, cypress swamps, upland forests, maritime forests, making it a perfect place to hunt and to fish.

(Massey, dramatized) Hobcaw Barony included a rambling house that the Baruchs called the Old Relic.

(Brockington) The Old Relic was full of bedrooms and windows and porches and exactly what Bernard Baruch and his wife wanted for their three children and their great number of guests.

(Massey, dramatized) All sorts of fancy folks would come down from New York on the train to go hunting.

We'd pick them up in Georgetow in Mr. Baruch's yacht.

For those who didn't want to hunt, there were plenty of other things to do, like boating or going to the beach.

♪ The hunting was first-rate back then.

You could bag 100 ducks in one morning.

Almost all foo the Baruchs served their guests was grown or caught on Hobcaw.

I remember one time helpin to fix oysters on the half shell for 24 people!

♪ (Brockington) After Bernard Baruch purchased the property, he realized he was gonna need a large staff to operate his winter retreat.

Fortunately, there were residents that still lived on the property.

About 100 freed slaves, their children, and their grandchildren still lived in four villages within Hobcaw's plantation.

When you think about African Americans in this particular location, they have ancestors who've been there, they're there now, and for some of them, it's life as usual.

It's work.

It's hunting, fishing, surviving, day-to-day surviving.

When you think about a Baruch who comes in and buys several plantations, over 15,000 acres of land, well, it still has people there, so what do you do with those people?

(Miller) The first thing he did was reassure them that there would be employment for everyone, and he did upgrade the homes that they lived in.

He built schools for the children.

He upgraded their little church.

He arranged to have a doctor here once a week.

So he did look after them in a very paternalistic way.

(Littlefield) Baruch probably felt he knew best about lots of things.

Poor whites, he would have fel he knew best about them as well.

Certainly, African Americans, he would have felt he knew what they needed, when they needed it, and how.

And if he decides he wants to go hunting and your daughte is getting married or whatever, (Massey, dramatized) William Kennedy was born on Hobcaw, the son of freed slaves.

He was the main hunting guide, and his wife Daisy was the Baruchs' cook.

Their daughter, Minnie Kennedy, grew up in a house right outsid the gate of the Baruchs' home.

(Minnie Kennedy) Baruch wanted a family close to him so that day or night he could reach you.

You didn't have to walk miles to meet his needs.

So they built that house for my family.

But anyhow, my father worked.

His salary grew and grew and grew, and by the time he died, his salary was $40 a month.

A month, $40.

All these years, and he was getting raises.

(Massey, dramatized) The difference between the way the Baruchs and the black folk lived was extreme.

Black folks didn't hav electricity or indoor plumbing.

Belle and her sister Renee had their own little house.

They called it "the dollhouse."

They had a set of Limoges china running water, and everything.

If you think in terms of what the need was, you need two bedroom if you're a black family with six kids.

From that point of view, their dollhouse was better 'cause the beds were real, the kitchen was real, and it was for playing.

(Rosengarten I would describe Bernard Baruc as a classic patrician.

Apparently, he was unaware of the impact his benevolence had on the community, especially the people who lived on the Hobcaw estate all their lives, who certainly were grateful, but who resented being treated as-- maybe not so much as children as almost as serfs.

(Massey, dramatized) Rich Yankees started buying up other old plantations on the Waccamaw Neck.

Archer and Anna Huntington bought Brookgreen, and Dr. Isaac Emerson, the inventor of Bromo-Seltzer, bought Arcadia Plantation.

Tom Yawkey, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, inherited three islands in Winyah Bay from his uncle.

We called this landgrab the second Northern invasion.

But we couldn't complain too much because it brought money... and jobs.

(Miller The South was really in poverty.

There was a lot of unemployment.

(Rosengarten) There was no capital to rebuild and to maintain these vast estates.

And, indeed, these new Northern owners became very important to the conservation of South Carolina's natural resources.

[birds chirping] It really did preserve the coastline for generations to come.

[chirping] (Massey, dramatized) Mr. Baruch hired my dad as his mechanic.

And my uncle, Jim Powell, became the superintendant of Hobcaw.

He taught the Baruch children to hunt and fish and to recognize plants and animals.

Belle was a natural hunter.

She shot her first deer when she was 13.

"The New York Herald" called her "the young Diana."

She was a sailor too, the first female to win the Queen of the Bay sailing prize in Long Island.

In fact, she could outride, outshoot, outhunt, and outsail most any man.

♪ Mr. Baruch hired me, Lois Massey from Georgetown, only 20 years old, as his social secretary.

I helped him and Mrs. Baruch keep track of all their guests and organized the big Christmas dinner they hosted every year.

There were politicians and bankers, artists and writers and movie stars, the well-heeled and well-connected.

They all coveted an invitation to Hobcaw.

Merry Christmas!

(Massey, dramatized) One of their visitors was the artist Rockwell Kent, who was famous for his illustrations of "Moby Dick."

♪ He drew a whimsical map of Hobcaw Barony with Mr. Baruch dressed a a king on the way to his castle.

♪ [clapping and singing a hymn] (Massey, dramatized Mr. Baruch renovated the churc at Friendfield Village, where most of the blacks who worked for him lived, and sometimes he would tak his guests to watch the service.

(Littlefield) Some of them would have been used to that.

If you think of a time past, blacks didn't have church without whites observing them, unless they stole away.

[singing and clapping] And they would, in many cases, expect white to want to observe their habits.

[droning] (Brockington) The first big changes came at about the time of World War I.

[sharp boom] Bernard Baruch sold his seat on the New York Stock Exchange and offered his services to President Woodrow Wilson.

(Massey, dramatized) President Wilson called on Mr. Baruch for advice and named him chairman of the War Industries Board.

(Miller) Next to the President, he was the most powerful man in America, and Belle was old enough at that time that she certainly shared the table with many influential political leaders.

She knew what was going on in the world and wanted to be a part of it.

When she graduated from school in 1917, we were in the midst of World War I, so there weren't big debutante balls and coming-out parties, which suited her just fine.

After all, she was 6'2-1/2", and the average man at that tim was 5'6-1/2".

She did the Red Cross, but that wasn't excitin for a girl with Belle's energy, so she joined the Women's Radio Corps, and that was more interesting and more exciting.

And she trained air crews of pilots in the use of Morse code.

(Massey, dramatized) Mr. Baruch brought Mrs. Baruch and Belle to France after the war.

It must have been awful to see the state that country was in, but Belle fell in love with France, and something woke up in her, a need to do something for the world.

When she got home Belle and her friend Evangeline started fighting for a woman's right to vote.

Evangeline Johnso came from a wealthy family too, the founders of Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceuticals.

Belle's grandparents were none too happy with her suffragist activities.

In fact, they were against it all the way.

Belle's grandmother was the hea of an antisuffrage committee.

(grandmother, dramatized) "Men have always guided and protected us.

"Suffrage, feminism, and socialism form an unholy alliance."

(Massey, dramatized) That didn't stop Belle.

She and Evangeline flew over Palm Beach in Evangeline's plane dropping leaflets.

They were protesting a pet peeve that women had to wear stocking with their bathing suits.

Mr. Baruch and President Wilso stayed in Paris working on the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.

When they returned, they had to convince the American Congress to go along.

a radio address to the entire country, something no President had ever done before.

(Rosengarten) Of course Wilson and Baruch lost that battle.

The Americans refused to sign the treaty and didn't support the League of Nations.

He was devastated, and he knew they were setting up Germany to become an enemy again.

(Massey, dramatized) Three months later, Woodrow Wilson died.

But his widow never forgot wha Belle had done for her husband.

Edith Bolling Wilson became a close friend.

After World War I, the car manufacturer Henry For started another war, a war of words against Jews published in his newspaper, "The Dearborn Independent."

(Rosengarten) Apparently, Adolf Hitler was a great fan of Henry Ford and picked up on a lot of his ideas and sentiments.

It was a very, very dangerous point of view, and there's no question that Henry Ford and his ilk fueled the Nazi terror that came in the next decade.

(Massey, dramatized) Henry Ford singled out Mr. Baruch by name and accused him of being part of a Jewish conspirac to control the world's economy.

When reporters asked him to comment on the charges, Mr. Baruch said... (Baruch, dramatized) "Now, boys, you wouldn't expect me to deny them, would you?"

(Massey, dramatized) As long as the Baruchs were alive, nobody ever drove a Ford on Hobcaw Barony.

♪ Finally, in 1920, women got the right to vote, and Belle turned 21.

(Brockington) She received a trust, about $1 million, and hoped to use some of that to purchase a part of Hobcaw that she could call her own.

She began asking her father, over and over, "May I have a part?"

And each time, her request was declined.

(Massey, dramatized) Belle shocked her family by cutting her hair, taking up smoking, and moving into an apartment in New York with Evangeline Johnson.

♪ Belle and Evangeline wer young and rich and independent.

They spent time at Hobca and traveled to Europe together.

[horn bellowing] But everything changed when Evangeline fell in love with the famous conductor Leopold Stokowski and decided to marry him.

To her own surprise, Belle felt betrayed.

(Miller But she controlled her feelings and tried to put Evangeline's feelings first, and she did.

She was one of the few people present at the wedding, which was a very private affair.

♪ But then, when everything was over with, she came home here, she came to Hobcaw, and she spent time walking in the woods and hunting and fishing and looking at her own feelings, trying to imagine what this was all about.

I think that's when she realized that she really preferred the company of other women, why she had never felt great attraction to any man, and certainly she had suitors.

(male speaker) Usually, love should not be a problem.

You know, you go around screaming it from treetops.

But in her case, society was saying no.

This should be, to quote Oscar Wilde, "the love that dare not speak its name."

So I think we feel for her in that regard.

(Massey, dramatized) Disappointed by her father's refusal to sell part of Hobcaw and feeling she had lost Evangeline, Belle decided to return to France.

She bought an apartment in Pari and made a home for herself.

(Greene) Certainly, Europe was a much freer place to be.

Also, she was so far from home.

In the United States, she was Bernard Baruch's daughter.

(Massey, dramatized) Her move to France was the beginning of Belle's greatest athletic success.

She had always loved horses.

Now a horse would help her break down more barriers for female athletes.

(Brockington) Belle was foxhunting in the Pyrenees when she was observe by one of the foremost trainers of international-level riders.

Paul Larregain said, "You must be competing."

(Miller) He trained her for Grand Prix show jumping, and he's the one who found Souriant for her.

(Massey, dramatized) Souriant Trois, a chestnut Anglo-Arabian, was Belle's most beloved horse.

She called him Toto.

Belle and Toto seemed made for each other.

They trained with Larregain for months.

But when they were ready, the U.S. Embassy wouldn't issu Belle a license to compete.

With Larregain's help, she finally got a French gentleman's license.

The key to her competition in France was that in France-- and throughout Europe, Italy and Germany as well-- she could compete against men.

Whereas in America, women were not allowed to.

Between 1923 and 1937, Belle was at the top of her game, competing throughout Europe in dressage, cross-country, and stadium jumping.

And in Italy, she was competin against Mussolini's officers.

In Germany, she was competing against Hitler's military officers, and each time winning, beating them, as an American, as an American woman, and as a well-known American woman with a Jewish last name.

That's one thing we find intriguing with her, and especially doing it in the time she did, when it was unusual for women to be professional horsemen.

I don't know if she would have liked to be considered a pioneer or a trailblazer, but we can certainly look back and claim her.

(Brockington) When Belle defeated Hitler's representatives in Germany, Hitler sent his officers to purchase that horse out from underneath her.

Souriant Trois, she announced to the Germans, was simply not for sale.

Later in Italy, after a competition in Florence where she had beaten Mussolini's military officers, they approached her about buying Souriant.

She said, "Hmm, what would you do with my horse?"

They said, "We wish to present it to Mussolini.

How much do you want for your horse?"

And Belle asked them, "How much money is in the bank of Italy?"

And they said, "Oh, millions!"

And she said, "That is simply not enough."

(Massey, dramatized) Belle expanded her stables in France and hired a well-known trainer Jean Darthez, to run them.

Belle and Toto kept on competin and winning prizes year after year.

In 1929, she met Barbara Donohoe.

(Miller) Belle met Barbara in Europe when she was riding.

It was an instant attraction and rapport between the two of them, sort of a love at first sight, and they traveled together throughout Europe, riding in horse shows and partying and touring and having a wonderful time together.

(Massey, dramatized) Belle placed first at the Paris Horse Show in 1931.

Out of 119 riders, she was the only one with a perfect score.

The next year, she wo the Premio Primavera Florentine, setting a woman's amateur high-jump record.

Belle and Barbara visited Hobca at least once or twice a year.

♪ The Old Relic had burned down, and Mr. Baruch buil a new brick home, Hobcaw House, designed to be fireproof.

Belle was still hoping her father would sell her part of the property.

She said she needed "a little American soil to cling to," though she and Barbara still weren't ready to give up Europe for good.

Adolf Hitler, sieg heil!

(Massey, dramatized) But Hitler's power was growing in Europe, and Mr. and Mrs. Baruch desperately wanted Belle to leave France.

(Rosengarten) Having a daughter over there, winning horse races and making a name for herself, must have been worrisome at the very least.

(Miller) He wanted her to come home, and so he more or less bribed her.

(Brockington) After years of hoping, Belle Baruch found out a Christmas, 1935, that her father was going to sell her a portion of Hobcaw, 5,000 acres on the northern end.

He said, "I'll sell you the piece of property that you want "and also let you take over managing the whole property if you'll come home."

(Massey, dramatized) Belle began building her new home, directing the job from France as she and Barbara made plans to move back.

(Brockington) She hired an architect, a landscape architect, and an interior designer, and decided she would rename her 5,000 acres Bellefield, after the name of a former ric plantation within that tract.

(Massey, dramatized) By that time, I'd been working for the Baruchs for 15 years, first as Mr. Baruch's secretary and now as Belle's assistant.

I oversaw the construction of Bellefield while she was in Europe.

And then, to my surprise, Belle and Barbara invited me to France for a vacation, all expenses paid!

Belle even bought me beautiful French designer dress.

I had to pinch myself to be sure it was me.

By 1937, Belle's house was completed, and she and Barbara spent Christmas there.

I helped them cook Christmas dinner for the Baruch family.

For New Year's, they all gathered at Hobcaw House, along with 150 guests, including Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington, Mr. and Mrs. George Vanderbilt, and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Luce.

But a family tragedy overshadowed the celebration.

(Miller) Annie Baruch got sick.

She had developed a very bad cold that had gone into her chest.

The doctor here did not want her traveling, but she wanted to go home.

(Massey, dramatized) Mrs. Baruch caught pneumonia and died in New York City less than a month later with Belle by her side.

(Miller) Belle was very close to her mother, but because of her sexuality, there was not that intimacy that she would like to have had with her mother.

There was always that slight barrier, the knowledge that it wa a disappointment to her mother.

(Greene) But probably the most tragic thing about it was the apparent silence, that they did not discuss it.

If you can't talk to your parent about a primary relationship in your life, if so much is off-limits, I'm assuming it starts eating away at the other things as well.

So I think that's the tragedy.

(Massey, dramatized) Belle's relationship with her father was easier, and he was a frequent visitor to Bellefield.

By 1938, Belle and Barbara were living there full-time, working on the grounds.

They planted camellias and made a courtyard of old bricks from the Charleston Conservatory of Music.

Belle brought her trainer, Jean Darthez, and his family to live at Bellefield just before France capitulated to the Nazis.

Belle had brought all her horses from France and built a stabl directly across from the house.

She wasn't riding as much anymore though.

She was nearly 40, and all those years of show jumping had given her arthritis.

♪ So she decided to learn how to fly.

She got her license, bought a couple of airplanes, and she and Barbara flew all over the country, shooting home movies of their trips.

(Miller) Riding wasn't the joy it had been, but she found that same freedo in an airplane that she had found riding pell-mell with a horse, and it appealed to her nature.

She had a wild nature and loved to be free and adventurous, and that was right up her alley.

(Massey, dramatized) Then one day, in 1941, Barbara left Hobcaw... and Belle.

(Miller) She was called home to San Francisco because her father was ill, and she left and just never came back.

What exactly happened?

Barbara never even came back for her horse.

Even her saddle and boots were here.

I think probably it was a arranged marriage by the family, and they wanted to bring her home.

(Massey, dramatized) Like Evangeline, Barbara left Belle to get married.

But Belle herself had twice considered marriage.

The first time was in 1930 to Charles Davila, the Romanian minister to the U.S. Belle said he was the only man she ever loved.

(Miller) It was just bad timing.

A lot of anti-Semitism in his home country of Romania, and they came to not want him involved with a Jewess.

(Massey, dramatized Later, she nearly became engaged to Monro Cuthbertson, an old family friend.

(Miller) I think it was very much going to be a marriage of convenience.

That was rather common in that day.

(Massey, dramatized) Monro was in a scandal involving another man.

It was in the newspaper, and Belle's parents took it hard.

They were all relieved that the engagement had not been announced.

♪ After Barbara left, Belle thre herself into managing Hobcaw... the gardens, machinery, beaches, boats, forests, domesticated and wild animals, and over 100 people.

(Brockington) Belle employed both white and black staff throughout the property.

William Kennedy continued to work for her father, but Mrs. William Kennedy, Daisy Kennedy, came to be cook and housekeepe at Bellefield.

She became Belle's cook, and the two of them knew each other so well that they talked to each other like I would talk to one of my friends out there.

(Massey, dramatized) Belle hated to see children on Hobcaw cutting school, and she appointed herself the Hobcaw truant officer.

(Kennedy) She would go on her horse during a school day, and if she saw a black kid who was not in school, she'd take that child to that one-room schoolhouse and say, "That's where you're supposed to be!"

They couldn't hide from Belle.

(Miller) The kids ran into the swamp because she was on horseback.

She got off the horse, waded into the swamp, and took 'em to school.

(Massey, dramatized) Mr. Baruch believed in education too.

He promised William Kennedy he would send his children to college.

But he had to be reminded.

I went to South Carolina State College after I finished high school here.

Baruch never sent one cent all my four years.

When I was graduating, I told my dad, "Why don't you let me send all the bills and stuff to Baruch?

He promised."

"Leave the man alone!"

My father, he was a real slave-minded individual.

But many wrote and asked, basically told him, "This is what you said you were going to do."

(Kennedy) It was less than $600 for the whole four years, so I mailed Baruch-- I didn't tell my dad-- mailed it to Baruch.

He sent my dad a check for the whole thing.

Then he wrote on the bottom of his note to my father, "That Minnie sure is rude."

(Littlefield) That can be both gender and race, but clearly he had a problem with that.

But he did live up to his word and pay for her education.

(Kennedy) With my father, they were pretty good people, you know, Baruch and his family, because my dad was so docile.

any problem with my dad.heye They had a problem with me, with "that Minnie."

Yeah.

[explosions booming] (Massey, dramatized) When the country entered World War II, Mr. Baruch was spending a lot of time in Washington.

He often met with politicians and reporters at his unofficial office, a park bench across from the White House.

He came to be known as the "Park Bench Statesman."

Here on the South Carolina coast, the war felt very close by.

Belle's airplanes were commandeered by the Army Air Corps, and at night we had blackouts.

We put heavy curtains on the windows, and cars had to drive without lights.

Belle went to work for Naval Intelligence as a coastal observer, watching for suspicious activity offshore.

Sometimes I would go with her down to the beach at night.

[surf crashing] (Brockington) Night after night, with just a staff member or friend, Belle observed, from her grass shack, the horizon.

Looking out at sea, there were flashes of light, there were boats, and sometimes, on the beach itself, there were individuals.

One of her reports led directly to the arrest of a German saboteur, who was traced to a beach hous at Pawleys Island.

And there, at that beach house, were rolled-up charts and maps of the Charleston Naval Base, the Charleston Harbor, and the Charleston Naval Shipyard.

(Massey, dramatized) In 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for a fourth term, but he was not well.

I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt... (Brockington) The President was ordered by doctors to take a health vacation, and perhaps Bernard Baruch's greatest gift to the Roosevelt Administration was offering Hobcaw Barony as a retreat in April 1944 to the President.

...of the United States.

♪ (Brockington) The President was guarded by the military.

Coast Guard patrol boats made their way up the five rivers that flow into Winyah Bay, and also naval warships were just offshore in the event they were needed.

(Massey, dramatized They put ramps at Hobcaw Hous for the President's wheelchair, and Secret Service men were everywhere.

In the afternoons, President Roosevelt usually paid Belle a visit.

They both loved nature and horseracing and dry martinis.

(Brockington) President Roosevelt, many believed, was able to add a year onto his life because of what became a month-long visit at Hobcaw.

Imagine if President Roosevelt had died in April of 1944 how very different things might have been.

(Massey, dramatized) World War II changed Hobcaw.

Many of the young black men who had served in the military didn't want to work for the Baruchs anymore.

They and their families began to leave Hobcaw Barony.

(Littlefield) How are you gonna keep them on the farm when they've seen Paree?

Once you've left a very isolated area, seen the world, seen other things that you could do, do you go back to that?

Some do, but many don't.

(Massey, dramatized) Mr. Baruch tried to keep the black folks on Hobcaw.

Anyone who left could never come back, not even to be buried.

(Littlefield) That's that paternalistic attitude again.

When the child does something perceived in your mind as wrong, you have to punish the child, and that was Baruch's way of punishing.

(Miller) I think perhaps he did that because he was hopin that that would make them stay.

And, of course, it didn't.

None of us like change, and the world was changing.

He was not comfortable with it.

(Massey, dramatized) Minnie Kennedy was one of the people who left Hobcaw for better prospects elsewhere.

(Littlefield Once Minnie finished her degree at South Carolina State in teaching, she taught for a short time in Georgetown.

But the pay, finding the right job, she just never found that.

(Kennedy) For $50 a month?

I was just making $10 more than my dad, who was working for slave labor or whatever.

One of my high school classmate had already moved to New York, so I told my parents I'd go spend a couple weeks with Lily in New York after my third year of teaching here.

But I went determined, if I found a job, I'm not coming back.

(Massey, dramatized) Minnie Kennedy stayed in New York, where she became a school principal.

♪ By 1952, the last African American living on Hobcaw had left.

Change was comin to Hobcaw's land and waters too.

Developers began draining nearby wetlands, and the wildlife, so plentiful when Belle was young, was vanishing.

She knew that maintaining and preserving Hobcaw would be no easy task.

She knew she was gonna have to have additional staff that not just worked at Bellefield, but also served as plantation managers.

She hired Nolan Taylor, who moved to Bellefield with his family, and he became the plantation manager, the overseer of the entire barony.

(Massey, dramatized Taylor was trained in forestry.

He helped Belle develop a plan for managing Hobcaw's woods.

Belle and Nolan worked to maintain bird habitat and tried to control the wild hog population, trapping the pigs and shooting them from Belle's jeep.

Belle got her airplanes back from the Army and patrolled Hobcaw from the air.

Local people had hunted and fished on the property for years, and they didn't take kindly to it when Belle swooped down on them.

(Brockington) She flew over the property almost daily looking for poachers and trespassers.

But I believe that Belle was very careful not to fly too low or fast and cause the boats to overturn because there went the evidence.

I met a man who had been arrested and couldn't help but ask if that had cured him of poaching.

He merely shrugged and said, "Well, it cured me of poaching on Belle Baruch's property."

They always said that they would rather meet Nolan Taylor on the property than Belle.

There's something intimidating about a 6'2" woman with a shotgun in her hands.

(Massey, dramatized) When Belle was young, she was very stylish.

But later at Hobcaw, she always wore work clothes.

When her father invited her to dine at Hobcaw House, he had to remind her to wear a skirt.

She told Nolan Taylor she'd rather shoot hogs than dress for dinner.

If she felt the need for sophistication, she would hop to New York City in her plane.

On one of these trips, she met a woman named Dickie Leyland and invited her to Hobcaw.

I didn't know it, but that was the beginning of the end of my working for the Baruchs.

Dickie Leyland lived with Bell for more than ten years, but she was always a difficult person, and she didn't like me.

(Miller) Dickie seemed to be a very possessive person.

She wanted all of Belle's time and all of Belle's attention, and she set about alienating people that were close to Belle.

Dickie was very, very jealous of Lois Massey.

She was not only jealou of her relationship with Belle, but of the esteem that she was held in by Mr. Baruch and the rest of the family.

And she finally persuaded Bell to fire Lois.

Rather than dismiss her on on one, she wrote her a letter, and certainly Lois deserved a lot better from Belle.

(Massey, dramatized) I took it hard.

Until Dickie came along the Baruchs had been kind to me.

But I got over it and went to work for the Post Office.

A few years later, Belle and Dickie took a trip to Europe, and Belle met an old friend, Ella Severin.

Belle invited Ella to visit Bellefield, and Dickie was furious.

When Ella moved in, Dickie left.

(Miller) Ella was very fond of Belle, and it grew into a loving relationship.

(Massey, dramatized) Belle and Ella lived a peaceful life.

They both loved animals, and when Nolan Taylor foun an abandoned fawn in the woods, they adopted it as a pet.

(Greene) I think Belle's progression gives us all hope.

Somebody once said, you know, "Age has its compensations... it needs them."

So as she was losing her looks, her athletic prowess, she comes to realize what truly is important.

It doesn't matter what people think, doesn't matter what you look like on the outside.

So she's finally reaching some sort of wisdom.

♪ (Massey, dramatized) In 1956, Belle's beloved horse Toto died at the age of 30.

She buried him under a live oa between the stables and house, where she could see his grave from her window.

♪ That same year, Mr. Baruch signed over all of Hobcaw Barony to Belle.

She began to work with her lawyers to create a foundation to protect Hobcaw.

♪ (Brockington Belle's vision for the property was that Hobcaw might never be developed.

She wanted a foundation to own the property, to operate the property, to control the property, but also the foundation was to make the property available to researchers from South Carolina universities and colleges.

(Miller) It was just a great love of the land and her observation of what was happening.

Certainly, she saw what had happened in Europe as properties were developed.

She saw what was happening.

She didn't want that to happen here.

(Massey, dramatized) By 1960, Mr. Baruch was 90 and still in good health.

But Belle hadn't been feeling well for some time.

In 1962, her doctors discovered she had an advanced case of cancer.

(Brockington) Surgery was performed, and the doctors believed that they had gotten the cancer, that they had cured her.

And yet within two years, Belle began to have health problems once again.

The first reason that they knew something was wrong is that she began to mis wild hogs as she was hunting... for the first time in her life to miss her game.

(Massey, dramatized) Belle died in April 1964 at the age of 64.

Her father outlived her by a year.

♪ (Brockington) Her vision in 1964 was so early.

There were some state facilities.

There were some national facilities and national parks and national forests.

But to link it with education, to link it with universities and colleges in this state, made it unique.

[water babbling softly] (Miller) This property has the only pristine estuary left on the eastern coast of the United States, and that's all due to Belle Baruch.

People come here from all over the world to study ecology and environment, and that's due to Belle Baruch.

So that was a great gift that she gave not only to South Carolina, but to the United States.

[insects chirping] (Rosengarten It's sad to see what's happened between Georgetown and Myrtle Beach.

It's really become a very homogenized land of subdivisions and gated communities, and the Barony protects over 17,000 acres of that land from commercial development.

[chirping] The Baruchs, Belle and her father, both deserve to be remembered in all their complexity, for the good they did and for, let's say, the evil they didn't prevent.

As characters of their time and place, they're both giants.

♪ ♪