Harry S. Truman: A Life

Notes

Notes Chapter One. Early Years 1. Mary Ethel Noland, "Nancy Tyler Holmes' Motto Fitting," Jackson County Historical Society Journal 10 (fall 1967): 8-9. 2. William Hillman, Mr. President, 39; Harry S. Truman, Memoirs: Year ofDecisions, 53. 3. Truman always believed his grandfather purchased this land in the vicinity of Sacramento. During his presidency California officials made a check of records but could not find anything. His biographer Jonathan Daniels doubted the story and so informed the president (Daniels to Truman, January 16, 1950, president's secretary's files, box 298, "Daniels, Jonathan"; unless indicated, all manuscripts are from the Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri). Sacramento was in the vast estate of John A. Sutter, who obtained his first grant in 1841 and another in 1845. The gold rush brought his ruin and the dispersal of his estate-his workers left and squatters came. Sacramento was laid out in 1848. Solomon Young did not arrive until 1854according to The History of Jackson County Missouri: Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns, Etc. (Kansas City, 1881), 987. Young doubtless approved the account in the latter volume. 4. Truman interview, November 12, 1949, by Jonathan Daniels, 72. These notes, in the Daniels papers in the Truman Library, were for Daniels's 1950 biography, The Man of Independence. The president told another story of a man who went to Lawrence, Kansas, for a Masonic ceremony and while visiting in a house saw that the owners had acquired a Bible belonging to the Lipscomb family. When he returned he told one of the younger Lipscombs, who wrote asking for it. He received no answer and wrote again, and in response to the second letter the Kansans took a razor, cut out the family pages, sent them, and kept the Bible. 5. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, 50. 6. Ibid., 48. "In her later years, Aunt Mary handled the stove work. Neither she nor anyone else in the family let me in on this secret all during my girlhood years.... For a while I was convinced that I was a female dropout, because I loathed the idea of cooking from a very early age, and still do it under protest" (ibid.). 7. June 28, 1884, quoted in Truman-Prairie Country Visitor, spring-summer 1986, vertical file, Truman Library. 8. The average size of a Missouri farm in 1880-1890 was 129 acres (Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975], 1:461). 403 404 / Notes 9. To Philip B. Perlman, December 22, 1951, vertical file. 10. Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Autobiography of Harry S. Truman, 6. Hereafter cited as Autobiography. 11. "Independence, Missouri: Its Schools, Churches, Residences, Improvements, Etc." (n.p., 1902). 12. Edward R. Schauffler, Harry Truman: Son of the Soil, 11. 13. Daniels, Man of Independence, 47. 14. For the Paxtons' memories of Delaware Street, see Mary Gentry Paxton [Keeley], Mary Gentry and John Gallatin Paxton; see also "In Memory of Mary Slover," Jackson County Historical Society Journal 6 (July 1965): 10. Mary Paxton Keeley oral history, by J. R. Fuchs, 46-48. Elizabeth Paxton Forsling, "Remembering Delaware Street," Jackson County Historical Society Journal 3 (May 1962): 7-12. See also Julia Twyman Fite, "Six Twyman Doctors," ibid. 6 (March 1965): 4-6. Elizabeth Forsling wrote that visiting Delaware Street at the turn of the century was like reaching up to the top shelf of a library, taking down an old leather volume, blowing off the dust, and turning the pages. 15. Keeley oral history, 23-24, 27-28. 16. Bela Kornitzer, "Harry Truman, Musician and Critic," Pathfinder, January 9, 1952, p. 26. 17. "The Music Critic and the President: The Second Time Around," Whistle Stop 16, no. 2 (1988), reprinted from Brian Lingham, Harry Truman: The Man-His Music. Whistle Stop is the newsletter of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, which is composed of friends of the library. 18. Leroy V. Brant, "Music's Significant Place in Modern Life," The Etude, October 1946,545. 19. Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S. Truman, 1948, 265. 20. Mary Paxton Keeley, Back in Independence, 212. 21. For Clinton's Drugstore, see the brochure "Independence, Missouri" cited in note 11 above; Truman, Year of Decisions, 141-42; Richard Lawrence Miller, Truman: The Rise to Power, 36-37; Harry S. Truman to Margaret Truman, June 23, 1941, family correspondence file, box 10. 22. Address from rear platform of a train, Galesburg, Ill., May 8...