Phone: (843) 723-3225
Museum: 100 Meeting St.
Archives: 205 Calhoun St.
This program is sold out! Please contact Hannah at hannah.mooney@schsonline.org to be added to the waitlist.
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Join us at the Fireproof Building for our Lunch and Learn Series! Hear from historians and experts about their work related to South Carolina’s history. Lunch will be provided.
For our October 27th Lunch and Learn, Lynn Hanson will present about her research on the life and work Belle Wilcox Baruch.
About Belle Baruch
Beyond establishing an official record of payment, a personal check outlines a narrative in a particular time and place, describing who gave what to whom, generally in exchange for goods or services. If a single check generates a “story,” consider the encyclopedic narratives that can be derived from a new collection of over 6,000 checks written by Belle Wilcox Baruch between 1940 and 1961. Belle Wilcox Baruch was the eldest daughter of Bernard Baruch, the wealthy Wall Street mogul of finance, known as the “park bench statesman” who advised six presidents. Much is known about Bernard, far less about Belle, though her accomplishments are considerable.
In 2016, Dr. Lynn Hanson and her Francis Marion University students discovered Belle Baruch’s checkbooks in a damp South Carolina basement. With permission from the Belle W. Barch Foundation, they began recording each transaction in searchable datasets of checks and stubs. The collection is a rich resource for public history, rendering a multitude of stories and insights into the check-writer herself, as well as the lives of those who lived and worked in her American sphere during the early 20th century.
Hanson’s presentation will describe the processes involved in recovering Belle Baruch’s checkbooks and developing the datasets. She will provide a sampling of the narratives that can be mined from the information and then synthesize the details in a character analysis of the woman who saved 16,000 South Carolina acres from coastal development.
About Lynn Hanson
Lynn Hanson, Professor Emerita of Francis Marion University, taught in the English department for 22 years before retirement and served as a founding Co-director for the Belle Baruch Institute for South Carolina Studies. She has conducted extensive research on Belle Baruch, whose foundation protects 16,000 acres of land known as Hobcaw Barony near Georgetown, SC.
In retirement, Dr. Hanson is a Research Affiliate with the University of South Carolina’s Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences. Her continuing research provides insights into the human activities on Hobcaw Barony that shaped the environment that scientists study today. One aspect of this research is recovering the names of the enslaved people who carved Hobcaw’s former rice plantations from the landscape and who labored on them through the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Hanson earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Auburn University and her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.
Thank you to our Lunch & Learn sponsor: UBS Financial Services
Date: Tuesday, October 27
Time: 11:30 am
Location: 100 Meeting Street, Charleston