With the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism in Europe during the 1930’s, Bernard desperately wanted Belle to return home. Bernard enticed her by bribing her with owning a piece of the property, and letting her manage the entire property if she came home. Belle agreed, and returned to the states, naming her 5,000 acres of land “Bellefield”, after an old rice plantation. Belle’s house would be completed in 1937, but celebrations would be cut short with the passing of her mother, Anne Baruch, due to her illness with pneumonia.
Belle was able to bring over her trainer and all her horses from France, before the country’s capitulation with Nazi Germany in 1938. Since she developed arthritis around 40 years old, Belle took up a new pastime: flying airplanes.
Barbara left Hobcaw, and Belle, to tend to her sick father in San Francisco, and never returned. Belle then decided to fully concentrate on life in Bellefield, and even became Hobcaw’s truant officer.
