Mary Reynolds Babcock

The eldest daughter of R.J. and Katharine Reynolds, Mary Reynolds Babcock (1908–1953) was an amateur painter who had the advantage of very fine artistic training. Born in Winston (now Winston-Salem), North Carolina, she spent the first years of her life in the family home downtown, moving with her family to the Reynolda estate outside of town just in time for Christmas 1917. She attended the Reynolda School and Salem Academy before being sent to boarding schools in New York and Pennsylvania. The death of her father in 1918 and her mother in 1924 introduced an unsettled period into her life; she spent most of this time away at boarding schools and under the care of guardians or house staff when home at Winston-Salem.

Upon graduating from Miss Wright’s School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1927, Mary Reynolds took the first of two trips abroad. In Paris, according to letters and diary entries, she took classes at “an adorable art school,” studied French, attended lectures at the Louvre, and visited as many museums as possible. After returning to the States, she continued her studies in New York. A schedule of classes from the 1928–1929 winter season of the Art Students League in the Reynolda House archives shows a mark next to a “life drawing and painting” class taught by Kenneth Hayes Miller; she also noted in a sketchbook, “Student Art League Miller A.M.” A second trip abroad in 1929 took her to England and France. Mary Reynolds’s passion for art comes through in her diary entries. In London, for example, she “went to the National Art Gallery and fell in love with the Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Turner.” In Paris, she wrote, “After breakfast we went to the Musée de Paume to see the exhibition ‘d’art japonais.’ Have never been so fascinated. It was true modern and yet so exquisitely executed. The perfection in detail—the grace—the rhythm—the tone—the color—the drawing—I just went wild to possess it.” [1]

During Mary Reynolds’s stay in Paris, Charles Babcock, a family friend who had been courting her, visited and presumably proposed. Mary and “Charlie” married in December 1929 and soon after moved to Philadelphia, where he worked as an investment banker. In the early 1930s, as they were starting a family, they moved to Greenwich, Connecticut. Their four children, three girls and a boy, were born between 1931 and 1937. Life in Greenwich was sociable and gracious. The Babcocks had brought some house staff with them from Reynolda, and Mary spent her time hosting parties, meeting with her garden club, playing bridge, and arranging flowers. Although her daughters do not remember her painting very much, it is possible that she had a home studio. [2] Pencil sketches of furnished interiors, perhaps executed as the family was planning and designing a mountain house, demonstrate that she had a firm grasp of one-point perspective.

In 1934, Mary Reynolds Babcock bought her siblings’ shares of Reynolda and began renovating it from Connecticut. She came into the full share of her inheritance in 1936, becoming one of the richest women in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. [3] She used her inheritance to expand and update the house with the architectural firm Johnson and Porter. She modernized the basement, turning it into an adult recreation area for parties and games, and she added a pool and a guest house. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, the Babcocks moved back to Winston-Salem because she felt safer there than in the Northeast. Rather than moving into the 64-room bungalow, they occupied a smaller house on the estate that was easier to maintain without a large staff. Charlie Babcock served in the military between 1942 and 1945.

Following the war, the family returned briefly to Greenwich, but they settled permanently at Reynolda House in 1948. In Winston-Salem, Mary Reynolds Babcock occupied herself much as she had in Connecticut, participating in genteel social activities and volunteering. One of the most significant events of her life was her donation of Reynolda estate land to Wake Forest College, inducing the college to move from eastern North Carolina to Winston-Salem. President Harry S. Truman broke ground on the new campus in 1951.

Mary Reynolds Babcock died of cancer in 1953. Like her mother, she was just forty-four years old. In her will, she established the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, which for years has generously sponsored charitable activities throughout North Carolina and the Southeast.

Notes:

[1] Sherry Hollingsworth, “Chronology of the Lives of R.J. Reynolds, Katharine Reynolds, Their Children, and Reynolda,” 2009, unpublished, Archives, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, 116, 122, 125, and 127.

[2] Phoebe Zerwick, “The Women of Reynolda,” Our State (March 2011), 102.

[3] Barbara Mayer, Reynolda: A History of An American Country House (Winston-Salem, NC: Reynolda House Museum of American Art, 1997), 108.