Truman(4)

Both the Youngs and the Trumans arrived in Missouri by steamboat. They were part of the second or third wave of settlers, when the state was already more than twenty years old. Within a few years of each other they steamed down the Ohio River to Cairo, Illinois, and from there up first the Mississippi and then the Missouri to Westport Landing, so called because Westport, now a southern suburb of Kansas City, was there before the city itself. They moved back a few miles east and settled around Independence, which was a major staging point to the West and the South West. They each brought with them a few slaves. They established themselves, a little precariously, in ante-bellum Missouri, which was a border state but still, just, a part of the old South and very different from the territories to the west and north of it.

Solomon Young was the dominant figure of the four. He acquired more land and at one time had 5000 acres in Jackson County, as well as the title to much of what later became Sacramento, California. But he sold as well as bought, and did so somewhat haphazardly, so that he built up no great fortune. However, the few hundred acres of Grandview core remained in the family for many decades; it became a neon-lighted shopping centre in the late 1950s. As a younger man Solomon Young had run wagon trains from Independence through Salt Lake City to San Francisco, often being away for a year at a time. As a result he missed the Civil War depredations of the ‘Red Legs’ from across the Kansas border, which remained an abiding memory with Truman’s mother. They slaughtered the hogs, removed the family silver and ruined a lovingly made quilt. Worse still, they tried, although not apparently very seriously, to hang her brother. Although more Missourians fought in the union   than in the Confederate armies, the Truman forbears and their neighbours were firmly for the South.

Solomon Young had an imposing presence, with a great white beard, and lived longer than Truman’s other grandfather, Anderson Shippe Truman. He therefore had a greater impact upon Harry Truman. Anderson Truman lived most of his life as a smaller farmer a hundred or so miles to the south of the Youngs, in Cass County. He had about 200 acres. Of the two grandmothers, Mary Jane Truman died before Harry was born, but Louisa Young lived until 1905, when she was 91. This fortified the greater strength of the Young influence.

Truman’s own parents were married in 1881. His father, John Anderson Truman, had been born in 1851, and survived only until 1914. He was the shortest-lived of the Truman tribe. His height was still more notably short. He was two inches below his wife. Her advantage in longevity was much greater. Born in 1853, she survived until the age of 95, well into Truman’s presidency. She had a strong personality and very determined views. Again, there is an impression of the greater strength of the Young side of the family. But Truman, devoted though he was to his mother, was always determined to controvert any under-estimate of his father. ‘He was just as great as she was,’ he recorded, ‘and had every bit as much influence on me …’2

John Truman, mostly known as ‘Peanuts’, pursued a variety of trades. In different stages or strands of his life he was a farmer, a cattle and horse dealer, a grain speculator, a night watchman, and an elected overseer of roads. Financial success always proved elusive, but he emerged from all these occupations, his son was insistent and uncontradicted, with his honour intact. He was also the first Truman to be an involved political militant. He held no notable offices, but he was a passionate Democrat. In 1892 he was excited by Grover Cleveland’s victory. He had to wait until 1912 for another Democratic president to be elected, but he then welcomed Wilson’s success, even though he would greatly have preferred Champ Clark, the only Missourian other than his son to come within striking distance of the presidency, to have secured the nomination. His politics were based on a simple, instinctive, loyal partisanship which he passed on to his elder son. He also took him to a greater number of political meetings, ensured he was made a page at the Kansas City Democratic Convention of 1900, when William Jennings Bryan was nominated for the second of his three unsuccessful candidatures, and, more surprisingly, introduced him to Plutarch’s Lives, which became a major literary influence.

Harry S. Truman was born, and so registered, at Lamar, Barton County, Missouri on May 8th, 1884. The ‘S’ stood for nothing but ‘S’.2 The choice of form by Truman’s parents stemmed from a desire to balance between the competing claims of Solomon Young and Anderson Shippe Truman. Whether either was satisfied is not recorded. The subsequent two children of the marriage (John Vivian, born 1886, and Mary Jane, born 1889) were more normally named. Vivian passed his life as a moderately successful working farmer, until he retired on the proceeds of the land sale for the shopping centre. Mary remained a spinster, who lived with her mother. Truman remained fairly close to both.