In the months ahead, two biographies will be published about Gertrude Sanford Legendre, late of Fishers Island, her 6,acre plantation near Charleston, S.C., called Medway, and big-game hunting country in Africa, India, Iran and Indochina.
She was a socialite born to vast wealth — she was a descendant of the Sanford family, which manufactured carpets in Amsterdam, N.Y., and raised thoroughbred racehorses — and she was a prisoner of war, armed with World War II secrets from her work at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and captured and held by the Nazis for six months.
She was also the mother of Landine Manigault, for many years a resident of Stonington, who declined to talk to me about her mother. For the record, she also declined to talk to the two biographers.
One is Peter Finn, national security editor at the Washington Post and author of the forthcoming “A Guest of the Reich: The Story of American Heiress Gertrude Legendre’s Dramatic Captivity and Escape from Nazi Germany.” It will be published by Pantheon and released in September.
The other biography, “The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Saanford Legendre: Heiress, Hunter, Socialite, Spy,” is by Kathryn Smith, a writer a
Gertrude Sanford Legendre ()
She was born at Aiken, South Carolina, to a wealthy New York family. She and her siblings were the inspiration for the Seton siblings in the Broadway hit Holiday, made into a film in in which Katharine Hepburn played Gertie's character. She was educated under the notorious Miss Charlotte at Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Virginia. She was eighteen when she went on her first hunting trip which ignited a passion for big game hunting and collecting specimens for natural history museums. Before the war in , she went on expeditions to Africa, South East Asia, Iran, Canada and Alaska. In , she and her sister were invited to the French Riviera with the Murphys where they hung out with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Harpo Marx and Somerset Maugham, who called the sisters “crazy show-offs”. There she met Sidney J. Legendre who had been studying at Oxford and who she would follow on an expedition to Abyssinia. They were married at New York in September, , and bought Medway Plantation in South Carolina that they dedicated themselves to restoring.
On the outbreak of war, Sidney joined the Navy and Gertie took a job on the cable desk
Gertrude Sanford Legendre Papers,
About the Collection
Gertrude Sanford Legendre (–) was an American socialite who served as an OSS operative during World War II. She was also a noted explorer, big-game hunter, environmentalist, and owner of Medway plantation in South Carolina.
The collection includes scrapbooks of Gertrude’s travels and family life, loose photographs ranging in date from the mid to late 19th century to the 21st century (including slides, negatives, and multiple other formats), motion picture film, manuscript material including correspondence and business records, and a small amount of published material.
For ease of access, this collection can also be browsed by category:
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- Date:
- Description:
- Letter from Armant Legendre to his sister-in-law, Gertrude Legendre, thanking her for her Christmas gift and regarding life, in general.
- Date:
- Description:
- Letter from Ralph M. Morris to Gertrude Legendre, regarding their change of address and the welfare of their children.
- Date:
- Description:
- This album is comprised of photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, and other documents from an expedition to French Equatorial Africa, in which Getrude Legendre participated. The expedition was sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and the National Geographic Society, and collected plant and animal specimens, photographs of wildlife and people, and recordings of native dialects and music.
- Date:
- Description:
- Letter from Olive Legendre to her sister-in-law, Gertrude Legendre, thanking her for the Christmas gift, relays news of her children, and describing a party Morris recently threw during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana.
- Date:
- Description:
- Letter from Olive Legendre to her sister-in-law, Gertrude Legendre, thanking her fo
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