Bernard Baruch

Bernard Mannes Baruch (August 19, 1870 – June 20, 1965) was an American financier, stock market speculator, and statesman.

Born in Camden, South Carolina, to a Jewish family—his father a Confederate surgeon—Baruch moved to New York as a child and graduated from the City College of New York in 1889 before entering Wall Street. By age 30, he had amassed millions through astute investments and speculation, earning a reputation as the "Lone Wolf of Wall Street" and becoming a governor of the New York Stock Exchange at 33.

Bernard Mannes Baruch was born on August 19, 1870, in Camden, South Carolina, to Simon Baruch, a physician of Prussian Jewish origin who had immigrated to the United States at age fifteen and served as a surgeon in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and Isabelle "Belle" Wolfe Baruch, a South Carolinian of Sephardic Jewish descent from a family of modest means. As the second of four sons—alongside brothers Hartwig, Herman, and Sailing—Baruch grew up in a household shaped by his father's medical practice and Confederate service, amid the economic challenges of postbellum South Carolina, though not in abject poverty given Simon's profession.

The family relocated to New York City in 1881, when Baruch was eleven, seeking better opportunities in the burgeoning urban economy, where his father continued practicing medicine. This move exposed Baruch to the competitive environment of late-nineteenth-century Manhattan, influencing his early exposure to commerce and finance amid a Jewish immigrant community.

Baruch married Annie Griffen, an Episcopalian from a socially prominent New York family, on October 20, 1897, after a seven-year courtship during which her father withheld consent owing to Baruch's Jewish heritage and the couple's religious differences. The wedding took place at the Griffen family home without her father's attendance, though he eventually relented and accepted the union. Annie, born in 1872, managed the household amid Baruch's frequent absences for business and advisory roles, focusing on antiques, social welfare, and family matters; she was characterized in obituaries as a reserved, maternal figure who prioritized domestic stability. The marriage lasted over 40 years until her death from pneumonia on January 16, 1938, at age 65.