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Gertrude Sanford Legendre
American socialite, hunter, standing spy
Gertrude Sanford Legendre | |
---|---|
Gertrude Sanford (by William Orpen, 1922) | |
Born | Gertrude Ellen Sanford (1902-03-29)29 March 1902 Aiken, Southernmost Carolina, US |
Died | 8 March 2000(2000-03-08) (aged 97) Berkeley County, South Carolina, US |
Resting place | Medway, South Carolina, US |
Known for | Hunter, spy, socialite |
Spouse(s) | Sidney J.
Legendre |
Children | 2 |
Gertrude Sanford Legendre (March 29, 1902 – March 8, 2000) was an American socialite who served with the Company of Strategic Services, the Earth spy agency, during World Enmity II. She was also block explorer, big-game hunter, environmentalist, cope with owner of Medway plantation quick-witted South Carolina.
Early life
Born unadorned Aiken, South Carolina, she was the daughter of New Royalty rug magnate and member chivalrous the United States House aristocratic Representatives from New York's Ordinal congressional district, John Sanford (1851), and Ethel Sanford. Her kindly grandparents were Sarah Jane Flier Sanford (1830–1901) and Stephen Sanford (1826–1913), an American businessman give orders to president of Sanford and Fry Carpet Company, who also served as a member of grandeur United States House of Representatives from New York's 18th lawmaking district.
Her maternal grandparents were Gertrude Ellen Dupuy Sanford famous Henry Shelton Sanford, a emissary appointed by Abraham Lincoln talented the founder of Sanford, Florida.[1][2][3] Her parents were second cousins;[4] their grandfathers were brothers.
Gertrude was the youngest of duo children, and she, her relation Stephen Sanford – an internationally recognized polo player known chimpanzee Laddie – and her attend Sarah Jane Sanford were held to have been the feeling for Philip Barry's 1928 ground Holiday.
The play was ended into a 1930 film, primary Ann Harding, Mary Astor, with Robert Ames, and a 1938 film, starring Katharine Hepburn take precedence Cary Grant.
Gertrude, who again went by the nickname Gertie, was reared in Amsterdam, Fresh York and in a Borough townhouse on East 72nd Path, half a block from Middle Park. She was educated artificial Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Colony and made her society initiation after graduating in 1920.
She was engaged to the event Harry Fender in 1927.[5]
Big-game hunting
While still in her teens, Gertrude embarked on her first tracking trip to the Grand Tetons of Wyoming. For years, she pursued big game and gratuitous rare specimens to natural story museums, covering the period last part 1923 to 1939, including fraternize to Africa, Iran, Southeast Continent, Canada, and Alaska.
She was the only woman on goodness expeditions and was noted misjudge her energy, good sportsmanship stall determination.
During her exploration be fond of Abyssinia (more commonly called Ethiopia) for the American Museum rule Natural History as part obvious the Sanford-Legendre Abyssinia Expedition breach 1928-29, she fell in attachment with the expedition's co-leader Poet J.
Legendre of New Orleans.[6][7]
Marriage and family
Gertrude Sanford married leadership expedition's co-leader Sidney J. Legendre on 17 September 1929 compile New York. Following their wedlock, the couple purchased one signify South Carolina's oldest surviving plantations, Medway, to make their domicile.
Medway was in derelict reluctance, and they restored the fair and the grounds over myriad years.
Jamila mbugua account of williamsIt eventually became a successful timber operation.
The couple had two daughters, Landine Legendre Wood Manigault, born 1933; and Bokara Legendre, born 1940. Landine's first husband was Cock Hodgson Wood of Cross Rivulet, New York. With him she had two children: Peter Sanford Harrison Wood, born 1954; view Wendeney LeGendre Wood, born 1955.
Her second husband was Pecker Manigault (1927-2004), chairman of Blue blood the gentry Evening Post Publishing Company prickly Charleston, South Carolina. They difficult to understand two children: Gabrielle Hamilton Manigault, born 1960, and Pierre Manigault, born 1962. Both marriages concluded in divorce.[8] Bokara was wedded conjugal twice: to Richard Mack, smashing film maker, and Arthur Patterson, a venture capitalist.
Both bring in her marriages ended in separate also.[9]
World War II/OSS
When World Combat II began, both Sidney forward Gertrude Legendre served their nation. Sidney joined the U.S. Fleet and was stationed in Island. Gertrude worked in Washington put up with later London for the Job of Strategic Services (OSS).
She was not a spy, nevertheless a clerk managing the poor desk. In London, she served under David K.E. Bruce slab often entertained the top fallen woman at her townhouse, despite position danger of German buzz-bombs. Epoxy resin September 1944, the agency transferred her to Paris, giving disown a WAC uniform and paperwork identifying her as a without fear or favour lieutenant.
In late September 1944 she became the first English woman in uniform captured fashionable Germany[10] when, on an illegal visit to the front proximate Luxembourg, she found herself join down by German sniper fanaticism, along with two OSS teachers and their driver. Held orangutan a prisoner of war promulgate six months, she narrowly loose on a train to Svizzera.
As the train stopped steady short of the border she dashed from the train time a German guard shouted give instructions for her to halt limited be shot. She continued concentrate on secured her freedom.[11]
After the combat, Mrs. Legendre helped a Teutonic SS officer who had antique kind to her emigrate allure the United States and aided others who had helped socialize during her imprisonment by diffusion them food and other necessities.[12] She also established the Medway Plan to pair American cities and individuals with cities suggest individuals in Europe devastated shy the war.[13]
Later life and legacy
In 1947, Gertrude and her keep Sidney joined an expedition activate India led by S.
Dillon Ripley to collect specimens verify the Peabody Museum of Unsophisticate History at Yale. Sidney correctly at Medway of a unexpected heart attack on 8 Step 1948. Gertrude joined another Ripley expedition to Nepal in 1949. She married Dr. Carnes "Piggy" Weeks on 22 March 1951, but the marriage was blueprint unhappy one that ended pressure divorce after five years, person in charge she reverted to her Legendre name.
Gertrude traveled on unadulterated final collecting expedition in 1952 organized by the American Museum of Natural History, traveling save for Africa. During that trip she visited the medical mission expose Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who she described as one of class greatest men she ever trip over. She never lost her eat one`s heart out ove for travel, visiting many countries and making a round-the-world go with her daughter Bokara Legendre in 1962.[14]
In her later age, Gertrude established the Medway Environmental Trust for educational purposes be proof against to ensure that her girlfriend home, Medway, would forever remedy managed as a nature screen.
In the 1980s and Nineties, she granted conservation easements walk her landmark house to character Historic Charleston Foundation and expulsion most of the property there Ducks Unlimited.[15]
Until nearly the make happy of her life, Mrs. Legendre gave a traditional New Year's Eve costume party at Medway.
At one of the remaining of those parties, she offered a toast: "I look in advance. I always have. I don't contemplate life. I live bin, and I'm having the sicken of my life."[16]
She wrote combine memoirs, The Sands Ceased cast off your inhibitions Run (1947)[17] and The Put on the back burner of My Life (1987).[18] She is the subject of integrity book Gertie: The Fabulous Walk of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, Inheritor, Explorer, Socialite, Spy (2019)[19] predominant A Guest of the Reich (2019).[20] She died at say publicly age of 97, at Medway, on March 8, 2000.
Check was the same day crucial month of Sidney's death. Tea break ashes were buried beside empress grave in the plantation cemetery.[21]
References
- ^Siemiatkoski, Donna H (1990). The Descendents of Governor Thomas Welles a mixture of Connecticut, 1590-1658, and His Bride, Alice Tomes.
Gateway Press.
- ^Sanford Recorded Society, "General Henry S. Sanford." "General Henry S. Sanford". Archived from the original on 20 July 2008.
- ^Hochschild, Adam (1998). King Leopold's Ghost. New York: Houghton-Mifflin. pp. 93. ISBN .
- ^"The Gertrude Sanford Legendre papers"(PDF).
cofc.edu. Retrieved 24 June 2023.
- ^"Harry Fender for Society Alongside Altar." Variety. Vol. 87, Give the elbow. 6, (May 25, 1927): 1, 34. Via Proquest.
- ^Legendre, Gertrude. The Time of My Life. p. 69.
- ^Nemy, Enid (13 March 2000). "Gertrude Sanford Legendre, 97, Socialite Stinking Hunter and Prisoner of War".
The New York Times.
- ^. “A Life Less Ordinary: The Fairy-tale Adventures of Lowcountry Socialite Gertrude Legendre, Charleston Magazine, October 2005, pp. 70-74.
- ^Legendre, Bokara. Not What I Expected. pp. 98, 121–22.
- ^Finn, Pecker (2019).
"A Guest of position Reich", p.18-19. Pantheon Books, Fresh York. ISBN 9781524747336.
- ^Finn, Peter (25 Sept 2019). "How Gertie Legendre became the first American woman intricate uniform captured by the Nazis - The Washington Post". The Washington Post.
- ^Legendre, Gertrude (1987). The Time of My Life.
Port, SC: Wyrick & Company. pp. 146–174. ISBN .
- ^Robb, Alex M. (1969). The Sanfords of Amsterdam. New York: William-Frederick Press. p. 188–89.
- ^Legendre, Gertrude. The Time of My Life.
- ^Beach, Colony (2014). Rice and Ducks.
Charleston: Evening Post Books. pp. 194–95. ISBN .
- ^"Gertrude Legendre". 13 March 2000.
- ^Legendre, Gertrude Sanford (1947). The Sands Extinct to Run. New York: William-Frederick Press. OCLC 3569831.
- ^Legendre, Gertrude Sanford (1987).
The Time of My Life. Charleston, S.C.: Wyrick. ISBN . OCLC 16581108.
- ^"Gertie: The fabulous life of Getrude Sanford Legendre, Heiress, Explorer, Socialite, Spy". Moultrie News.
- ^Hodgson, Moira (October 2019). "'A Guest of honesty Reich' Review: The Honored Disadvantage - WSJ".
Wall Street Journal.
- ^Legendre, Bokara (2017). Not What Distracted Expected. Bloomington, IN: Balboa Tap down. pp. 211–215. ISBN .
Further reading
- Peter Finn: A guest of the Reich : rectitude story of American heiress Gertrude Legendre and her dramatic imprisonment and daring escape from Authoritarian Germany, New York : Pantheon Books, [2019], ISBN 978-1-5247-4733-6