Oral History Interview with
Mary Ethel Noland
First cousin of Harry S. Truman
Independence, Missouri
September 16, 1965
James R. Fuchs
[Notices and Restrictions | Interview
Transcript | Additional Noland Oral History
Transcripts]
NOTICE
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry
S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee
but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember
that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written
word.
Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.
RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced
for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission
of the Harry S. Truman Library.
Opened 1966
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri
[Top of the Page | Notices
and Restrictions | Interview Transcript
| Additional Noland Oral History Transcripts]
Oral History Interview with
Mary Ethel Noland
Independence, Missouri
September 16, 1965
James R. Fuchs
[146]
FUCHS: We might just start with the tale you remembered while we were
talking a little bit ago.
NOLAND: Yes. This is in line with what we were saying last time about
what a carefree time we had, It certainly was the "age of innocence"--just
a hilarious good time, and remarkably within the bounds of propriety,
I think, looking back on it now. We had no intention of getting out of
bounds at all, but we didn’t feel restricted, we didn’t feel cramped in
any way. It was just a hilarious good time whenever we were together.
And one of those boys that played in that group out here when they lived
at the Pittman place was going to be married in 1913, and so, we were
invited to the wedding, and he was marrying a girl of considerable
[147] means.
In the meantime this young fellow, whose name was Manley Houchens, had
gotten into the hardware business and was doing very well in Toledo, Ohio.
But he had come back for his bride and they were having a very formal
wedding. The word went around that they would be very much pleased if
everybody came in formal clothes. Well, of course, Nellie and I had new
dresses, and Harry had--I don’t know whether it was his or not--but he
had a tuxedo, and he borrowed a top hat from Frank Wallace. Now I think
it wasn’t Frank’s hat, originally; Frank had two uncles that had been
in social life a good while and they would have that sort of thing. One
was named Frank Gates and the other was Walter Gates, and many of their
old belongings were still over there in the Gates attic. Well, Frank had
resurrected what was called an "opera hat," and
[148] it was a collapsible
hat. You sort of flipped it this way and it opened out. And, so, Harry
and Frank having the same head size, Harry borrowed the opera hat. Well,
on the night of the wedding, which was at the First Baptist Church, it
was in late October, and instead of having typical beautiful, balmy October
weather it rained, and it snowed, and it blew and it was a terrific night.
So Harry called a cab--horse-drawn of course, then--and after the wedding
was over we got in the cab to go to the reception out here on River Boulevard
at the home of the bride.
FUCHS: What was her name?
NOLAND: Her name was Frances Clemens, and as he leaned out of the cab
to tell the cab driver the address he struck his head and the hat
[149] collapsed.
You can’t imagine anything funnier looking than that little fried egg
thing sitting on top of his head. Well, we began one of those hilarious
laughing spells, and we laughed and we laughed and he could see that he
must look awfully funny and he left it that way, and the more we looked
at it the more, we laughed. Well, when we got to the house we were laughing
so we didn’t want to get out. We didn’t want to go into the wedding reception
just dying laughing, and we sat in the cab until we recovered from that
laughing spell, and he straightened up the hat, and so we went in with
great decorum; all of which shows that we could laugh about almost nothing,
because we were carefree and a little irresponsible, I think.
FUCHS: Well, I’d like to have seen that. Too bad you don’t have a picture
of that--him with that hat on.
[150]
NOLAND: Oh, I’d like for you to see it, too. I don’t even know where
the hat is. I imagine they’ve cleaned out that attic more or less and
stored more valuable things. They have a good many things that were gifts
to them that are still over there. They had to remodel that attic after
they came back. It was, well, they put a ventilation system, because of,
I suppose, spontaneous combustion might occur, you know, so many things
were there; and so they put in ventilators and things of that kind.
FUCHS: It’s pretty crowded in that attic, I guess?
NOLAND: Well, I think they’ve taken some things out to the Truman Library
because they always intended that the things that were given them should
be for the public and not for their own private use, wherever that was possible.
Then there’s another little story--I don’t
[151] know whether it’s of great
importance--but I thought of this after our talk week before last, about
when my grandfather and grandmother lived in Platte County, I told you
they went over there when these children were quite small, my mother and
Harry’s father. And about the Civil War during that time, there was no
fighting around there, but sometimes the Kansas Redlegs would come over
and they wou1d shoot a harmless old man because he was a Southern sympathizer,
or sometimes they would even hang one; and sometimes they would shoot
a young boy who was almost too young to bear arms, but they would trump
up excuses because they were really a band of desperados, not real soldiers.
Then, of course, they came to this side of the river, too, and Quantrill,
though, kept them pretty well terrified; but it was nip and tuck between
Quantrill and the Redlegs, and a little bit hard to
[152] tell which could outdo
the other when it came to vengeance. But the Quantrill band, originally,
was formed for protection for those raids that were going back and forth,
so it depended on which side you were on just how black each one was.
Well, in Platte County, my great grandmother, Nancy Tyler Holmes, would
spend time with each child. She had a number who had moved out here and
my grandmother was one of them. So one time during the Civil War, they
were disturbed by a great commotion across the road from where they lived
where there was a family by the name of Davis. And one night the old colored
woman whose name was Hannah--she was the main one of their Negroes (they
never called them slaves; they always spoke of them as "our people")--they
were very considerate of
[153] Hannah, and they were of all others; they treated
them with respect. I remember my great-grandmother wrote a letter--I still
have it--to my grandmother and she said, "Mary, I want you to get
Hannah a new bonnet. You know how Hannah loves to go to church and you
must get her a new bonnet, so she’ll be presentable," And this old
colored woman was really dear to them. On this particular night she came
from the quarters and she came to the window of my grandmother’s room
and she called in a half whisper, "Miss Mary, Miss Mary, they’re
killin’ them all over at Mrs. Davis’!" And with that my grandmother,
got up and dressed and my grandfather got up and everybody got up and
dressed. And my grandfather took his gun and went over to see what was
the trouble with the Davises. And the rest of them all took to any place
away from the house, running. And my great-grandmother
[154]
at that time must
have been about eighty-something or other, and she and some little boys
among them Harry’s father, little John Truman, went to a cornfield a long
way from the house, and way into the cornfield, and it was early fall
and the cornstalks were there, though I suppose they had gathered the
corn probably; but she had never been in that place before in her life
and there she ran with those little boys. And my Uncle William must have
been with them, but he was older, and then little John was about ten years
old, because he was born in '51. And with him was a little neighbor boy
named Charley Hinkle. They finally got to a place in the cornfield where
they thought it would be safe to stop and they were all out of breath,
and probably a good many of the little colored people were with them,
because there were little children in the colored
[155] families.
That reminds me that my mother recalled a wedding or two that these young
colored women, Hannah’s daughters, were married during my mother’s childhood,
and my grandmother would make the wedding dress; and they would be married
to some man that belonged to a neighbor because all of our people, as
they called them, were women. And so one of them married a colored man
who belonged to a Rogers’ family, and my mother described the wedding
dress that my grandmother made for Mary, especially, and then, of course,
the families were not united, but it was the best you could do under those
slave conditions.
There were little children and probably some of the little colored children
went with them to this cornfield, Well, it was cold--the nights were cold
you know--they are cold in
[156] the fall. And the little boys were shivering
fit to kill. They were really in misery. Well, my great-grandmother had
on a billowy, hoop-skirt and she felt that she should protect those little
boys, little John and little Charley Hinkle, and whoever else she could
gather together; but of course, these two were the ones mother was telling
me about. And so she gathered them up and spread her hoop skirt out over
them to protect them from the chilly air. Well, after awhile, my grandfather
went back to the house, and he began to yoo-hoo for them to come back;
but he did a lot of yoo-hooing because they had scattered far and wide.
They all got back but the grandmother and the children, and they had to
hunt for them. Well, being in a cornfield, it’s hard to find your way
out. They finally found her after so long, chilled to the bone. But the
little boys were
[157]
fairly comfortable in that tent, you might say, that was made by the hoop skirt.
FUCHS: What did they find out was going on over at the Davis’?
NOLAND: They found out that one of the Davis boys was going away to join
the Confederate Army. The Redlegs hadn’t come, but the Confederates had
come to take one of the Davis boys into the service, and so they had escaped
the Redlegs as they did during the whole war.
FUCHS: Hannah had just thought there was so much noise and commotion over there?
NOLAND: They were crying, they were weeping, they were wailing, you would
have thought they were all being murdered, and, so, that was not what
it was all about.
[158]
FUCHS: What do you recall of Harry’s piano playing? When did he start
and do you have any memories of that?
NOLAND: Yes, I do. His mother had taken music lessons at the college
where she went in Lexington, Missouri. It was called the Lexington Female
College, I believe; it’s no longer in existence. But she had been a student
there and she had learned to play; though she had a musical ear I think
she played better by ear than she did by note because if she once heard
a tune she could play it without watching and so that made her a little
careless about watching the notes; it was too easy playing by ear. And
he had the same desire to play, so that when they had a neighbor move
in next door to them out there by the name of Burrus, they...
[159] FUCHS: Was this on Waldo?
NOLAND: Yes, it was on Waldo. Miss Florence Burrus was a young lady at
the time and she had taken up a plan for teaching "shorthand,"
music, I think it was by numbers rather than by notes, an easy and painless
way to learn to play the piano. So, Harry took music lessons from her.
I think it was more novel as a plan than it was thorough, but he learned
to play and finger and so on.
FUCHS: About what year did he start?
NOLAND: He was about twelve, I should say--twelve or thirteen. But he
took music lessons from her, and he was pretty faithful about practicing.
He liked it and learned to play. It was a start, but after he moved to
Kansas City, he began to take from a really fine teacher, Mrs. E. C. White,
who was one of the best to be
[160] found in all this locality.
FUCHS: He was about nineteen then.
NOLAND: Yes, he was.
FUCHS: And he was still taking?
NOLAND: Yes, he was, and he took for a number of years, in fact, I think
he took lessons pretty well up until he went to the World War.
FUCHS: Even after he was on the farm?
NOLAND: On the farm--he went back and forth and took lessons from Mrs.
White. Mrs. White and Harry's mother were great friends. They thought
a great deal of Mrs. White, and Harry really became a fairly good piano
player. And of course it was classical music and we thoroughly
[161] enjoyed
it because it was--a fine world of music that he has enjoyed ever since--he
likes good music; he knows good music. Mary Jane took lessons from Mrs.
White, too, a long time.
FUCHS: He must have taken lessons nearly twenty years.
NOLAND: Well, he did; he took a long time. And then there would be times
when he wouldn’t be taking and then he would go back and take again, because
he just liked it and he liked Mrs. White and her-mother, too, the grandmother.
Harry was fond of older people, He was brought up to be fond of them.
They were devoted to the Grandmother Young. He was a person that age meant
very little to. If he liked a person, it didn’t matter whether they were
old, young, or whatever they were.
[162]
FUCHS: Do you have any vivid memories of Grandmother Young?
NOLAND: Yes, I knew her well. She lived to be along in the nineties so
that she’s one of my earliest recollections. She was of Scotch-Irish descent.
Her name was Gregg, and her mother’s name was Scott, so they were typically
of the red-haired, Scotch-Irish type. She was a very quiet woman. I don’t
remember hearing her talk very much, but a woman of fine judgment and
fine principles.
FUCHS: What about Solomon Young--of course you would have been pretty
young, I guess. He died in 1892, I believe?
NOLAND: I think it was ‘92.
FUCHS: Do you recall much of him?
[163]
NOLAND: Well, he was what we might call a very old man at that time because
he was born along about--I don’t remember the exact date, but it would
be 1816 or something like that. So he was pretty well advanced. Now, he
was not like his wife. He was a talkative man and a man who liked to talk
about his adventures in life, and it had been interesting. He used to
freight across the plains and as far as Salt Lake City, where he made
friends with Brigham Young, who was in his heyday then; and while there
was no connection there, the names happened to be the same, but Brigham
was a man of affairs and ran his affairs with a good deal of system--business
as well as other affairs--and so the two formed a sort of a business friendship,
which is rather interesting to recall.
[164] FUCHS: He did go to California, too, didn’t he?
NOLAND: I suppose maybe he did. I don’t know; in my memory he just got
to Salt Lake City, and that’s as far as I can take you. There are records
in the archives in Salt Lake City of Brigham Young’s dealings with Solomon Young.
FUCHS: What about Anderson Shipp Truman, what about him?
NOLAND: He died in '86.
FUCHS: So, you would have been very young then.
NOLAND: I remember him very well. He used to visit us. We moved to Independence
in ’83 and he used to come to visit us when he lived on Maple Avenue and
stay for several weeks at a time, but I don’t think he was ever very happy
away from Johnnie. He always called
[165] my Uncle John, "Johnnie."
He put "ie" on all our names. My mother’s name was Ellen and
they called her Ella, but he called her Ellie, and then there was Willie
and Emmie and Mattie and Johnnie. But he and Johnnie made quite a business
team, so he would go back to Johnnie. And when he sold his farm he went
to live with Johnnie in Lamar, and when Johnnie moved to Grandview, he
went along with Johnnie. So that he was there at the Young place when
he died. He was a very gentle, mild man.
FUCHS: Was he the quiet type?
NOLAND: He was the quiet type, very quiet, very gentle, very mild.
FUCHS: His wife, then, Martha Ellen, how would you characterize her?
NOLAND: His wife’s name was Mary Jane, my mother’s
[166] name was Margaret
Ellen, and that was his daughter, you see. My mother was his daughter.
FUCHS: Oh, I’m thinking of John Anderson Truman, yes. His wife was Martha
Ellen. Mary Jane is the one I meant, yes.
NOLAND: Yes, Mary Jane had died in 1877.
FUCHS: You never would have known her?
NOLAND: No, she died before I was born. He was the only one of my grandparents
that I ever saw.
FUCHS: What about John Anderson Truman, now?
NOLAND: He was the quiet type, too. A very quiet man.
FUCHS: Did you ever hear him called by the nickname that some people
have said he had, "Peanuts?"
[167]
NOLAND: Oh, no, I never did. I’ve been surprised at that. I wondered
who in the world could ever have started such a name as that. He wasn’t
a person you’d ever nickname. He was a quiet, reserved type of man.
FUCHS: Somebody dreamed that up?
NOLAND: I’m afraid they did. A lot of these stories have been dreamed
up and I’m rather glad to say that I don’t think they have any foundation.
FUCHS: Is there any foundation to the story that he was testifying in
court once and chased the lawyer out of the courthouse when he called
him a liar in so many words?
NOLAND: I don’t know of the incident. But it wouldn’t be safe to call
him a liar if you were in court or out. In spite of the fact he was very
quiet, you wouldn’t call him that unless you smiled.
[168]
FUCHS: What about Harry’s graduation, did you go to that?
NOLAND: He graduated the year after I did. I have an idea that I went.
FUCHS: You don’t recall any incidents?
NOLAND: I don’t recall anything about it.
FUCHS: He had fairly close relationships with Roger Sermon, I believe.
Do you know of that?
NOLAND: He did, especially after the First World War. They were in the
Army together, and, oh, they knew each other as boys, but Harry was somewhat
older than Roger, I think, a little. And so they were not in the same
gang as little boys. The Sermons lived on Pendleton Avenue at that time,
if you know where Pendleton Avenue is.
[169]
FUCHS: I’ve seen it but I can’t quite recall where it is.
NOLAND: It comes to a dead end at Lexington over there, a short street
that goes down just east of Union. The first street west here is Union.
But Pendleton Avenue was quite a street. Three mayors of Independence
grew up on Pendleton Avenue, the two Sermons and Charles Capelle. Of course,
the boys in a little neighborhood would run together, and so the Pendleton
Avenue boys were sort of separated by distance from the Waldo Avenue boys.
But they were not gangs in the sense that we think of gangs now. They
played together, but it was pretty harmless fun as we think of gangs now.
FUCHS: Do you recall any criticism of him as county judge, when he served
as eastern judge or presiding judge?
NOLAND: Well, I can’t imagine a politician that had no criticism, but
I don’t recall any. I think
[170] they were pretty well pleased in the main
with the way he handled the affairs of the county, especially the roads.
FUCHS: What about the building of the new courthouse in Kansas City?
Do you recall anything in connection with that? That’s another monument
to him, so to speak.
NOLAND: And the remodeling of the courthouse here I think was pretty
well liked.
FUCHS: Was that pretty much his idea?
NOLAND: Yes. It is modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia; and
it was in a terrible state of disrepair, so I suppose everybody was pleased
with it. I know I was.
FUCHS: One story that has made the rounds, of course, is that he had
read every book, including the encyclopedias, in the public library, but
people
[171]
wonder sometimes just what was the public library, where was it,
who owned it...
NOLAND: Well, it was in connection with the high school, and it started
in the old Ott School which has been torn down, which was across from
St. Mary’s Catholic Church. There was just the one room there, but the
books were well selected and they had a complete set of Plutarch’s Lives,
which he devoured because he loved history; and the books were
well chosen. Then after the new high school was built up here at the corner
of Pleasant and Maple, and on down to Truman Road, they had a larger library
and more of a selection. But the Trumans had a good many books at home;
his mother bought books for him. She would buy anything that they could
enjoy, that would improve them. And that boy read--I don’t know anybody
in the world that ever read as much or as constantly
[172] as he did. He was
what you would really call a "bookworm."
FUCHS: Then this library they speak of was pretty much a school board library.
NOLAND: Yes, it was.
FUCHS: Was the public given access to it?
NOLAND: Yes, everybody could draw books from it. And it was quite an
asset to a town of that size--a small town it was at the time; and it
really was pretty widely used.
FUCHS: When he came back from the service did he talk much about his
military career?
NOLAND: Very little. I would love to have heard him talk about it, but
he said very little about it. I can recall very few things that he said.
One thing I do recall, that he
[173] did not like the French. He liked the Germans
better than he did the French.
FUCHS: Is that right. Did he say why?
NOLAND: I don’t think he did; but he didn’t feel a tie with the French.
I think he was a little disappointed. You know, American people hadn’t
known people in foreign countries at that time very well. In fact that
was in the age of isolationism and we didn’t become a world power until
that time. They got acquainted with a great many people of different nationalities
and it opened up many things. We have a French ancestor, but it’s way
back. His name was Duvall, and he came to Maryland in about 1650, and
settled there and claimed a good deal of land. Mareen Duvall was his name,
and his daughter married a Tyler, and that Tyler name went on clear down to my great
[174]
grandmother’s day; the one that hid in the cornfield was named
Tyler, that was her maiden name; but, you see, that one French tie goes
way back. He was a Huguenot refugee. We have only the one French ancestor,
some Scotch, Irish, English--that’s just about the story of our ancestry.
FUCHS: Did Mr. Truman go to the Baptist Church in Independence?
NOLAND: He didn’t attend the Baptist Church much. When they first came
here the Trumans went to the Presbyterian Church Sunday School because
it was near and they never attended--I say never--now Mary Jane did, and
Mary Jane was baptized at the First Baptist Church, the church that I
attend, and she went there, but Harry would go, oh, say, with us--well,
we went to church in the evening a great deal,
[175] because, oh, there wasn’t
too much to go to and maybe that was why we did it. It’s not a very good
reason, but that was probably it. He would go with us to church, but he
never belonged there. When he did join the Baptist Church it was at Grandview,
and Vivian never joined the Baptist Church. He belonged to the Community
Christian Church at Hickman Mills. (The old name was Hickman’s Mill but
now it is known as Hickman Mills.).
FUCHS: When he was deciding in 1926 to run again after his defeat for
eastern judge in 1924, did you hear talk of his wanting to be county collector,
rather than running for presiding judge?
NOLAND: No, I didn’t know that.
FUCHS: In ‘30 he had a campaign for his second term for presiding judge.
Do you recall anything
[176] of interest about that?
NOLAND: No, I don't recall.
FUCHS: Did you participate in the campaign in any way? You'd gotten used
to him being Senator. Did you feel that he was going to win in 1940 in
a rather heavily contested primary against Stark and Milligan?
NOLAND: That was Maurice Milligan?
FUCHS: Yes.
NOLAND: Well, I don't remember having any doubts that he would, but when
he was nominated for Vice President, he didn't want to be Vice President,
and I remember he came here to see us before he went to the convention;
and my mother was upstairs and he went to see her, and he said, "Aunt
Ella, I’m going to the convention to defeat myself; I don't want to be
Vice President."
[177] FUCHS: It turned out a little differently.
NOLAND: Yes, it did.
FUCHS: What about in 1934, he ran for Senator, there was talk that he
had other aspirations, really? Do you recall anything of that?
NOLAND: No.
FUCHS: Mainly that he wanted to run for the newly created congressional
district representative.
NOLAND: I don't know anything about that.
FUCHS: Did you visit him when he was in Washington as Senator?
NOLAND: No.
FUCHS: You didn't.
NOLAND: No, they lived in an apartment. They didn't have a great deal
of company; and they
[178] didn't have very much help at the time. They lived
very simply, and she helped him with all his clerical work, things of that kind.
FUCHS: Do you know if Margaret and Mrs. Truman lived in Mississippi for a while?
NOLAND: They went down there, I think, one winter, and maybe more, because
Margaret was subject to colds and they went down there more for her health
than anything else. I don't think there was anything radically wrong,
but they didn't like that recurring spell of colds and sore throats and
things of that kind, so they went down there.
FUCHS: They just spent the winter months?
NOLAND: Yes.
FUCHS: Where was that?
[179] NOLAND: I would say Biloxi, I’m not sure.
FUCHS: Is there anything you recall that might be of interest--any anecdotes
about his senatorial career, either the first term in ‘34 or ‘40, or ‘40 to ‘44?
NOLAND: Well, I suppose the best known anecdote is about his defense
of Pendergast, which I always considered unnecessary because, as I’ve
said before in this series of talks--and he couldn’t have run for anything
without Pendergast’ s consent, nobody did--and Pendergast didn’t pick
him because he particularly liked him, but because he thought he’d run
a good race and could be elected--so I thought his gratitude was out of
reason, because he was no more obligated to him than any other candidate
who got his consent to run. But in the second term, I believe it was, when he was
[180]
chairman of a committee, he attracted national attention there
in trying to do away with the waste of public spending; and I think he
enjoyed that investigation very much. In fact, he enjoyed being Senator.
I think he would rather have been Senator than anything in the world, even President.
FUCHS: Is there anything in connection with his activities as head of
the Truman Committee that you recall? Did you see him?
NOLAND: No, no. Oh, they would come home and we would see them but there
was nothing official that I could think of.
FUCHS: What did you think when he entered the race for Senator? Were
you surprised?
NOLAND: Yes, I was surprised, and a good many people thought there was
quite a gap between the office of being presiding judge of a county and
running for the Senate; but I was pleased
[181] that he wanted to do that and
sincerely hoped that he would get it, though it seemed like a hard race
because Tuck Milligan was well-known throughout the state and, while Harry
was well-known in Masonic circles and locally (he, of course, had attracted
attention by his careful spending of county money), he was not as well-known
as Tuck Milligan and certainly not as well-known as Tuck Milligan’s--well,
I suppose--best friend, you might say, Bennett Champ Clark. Clark was
a name to conjure with in those days, and anybody who was a friend of
the Clark’s stood high in Democratic circles.
FUCHS: Why do you think they didn’t get along too good at first, Mr.
Truman and Clark? Just because of his activities with Pendergast or why?
NOLAND: Clark came of a political family and he
[182] would understand the
connection between Harry and Pendergast, which was purely political. Harry
always said he knew no harm of Pendergast. He never offered him any dishonest
advice or anything of the kind in his life, and there was no question
about Harry ever being engaged in any of the crooked schemes that Pendergast
was in, and Clark would not look down on that; he would think that was
perfectly legitimate, because you had to have the consent of the "Big
Boss" anywhere where there was a big boss. But I: think Clark felt
that he was not, maybe, senatorial timber as yet, and he didn’t know him
very well at the time, anyhow. He did know Tuck Milligan and they were
old friends. And Milligan was a fine person; so was Maurice Milligan.
They were really very fine men.
FUCHS: What about the vice-presidential nomination?
[183] Was there anything
else that you recall that he said or that happened before or after he
received the nomination? You say you think you were in Minnesota at that time?
NOLAND: Yes, we were just about to go to Minnesota, we were driving up,
and so we didn’t--that was the time--we didn’t know about his nomination
until we got up there. And by that time he and Ralph Truman were fast
friends again and he’s a very forgiving sort of person, in spite of the
fact that Ralph worked tooth and nail for Tuck Milligan. When it was over
and he had beaten Milligan he could afford to be magnanimous, and he forgave
practically anybody who had fought against him including Bennett Clark
and Ralph Truman. So we were interested in whether he was nominated for
Vice President though it seemed to us like the remotest possibility, I
think; looking back on it, growing up
[184] with a person and being practically
the same age it’s hard to see him in a place of that kind, however much
you might be for it; it’s hard to imagine it. And we didn’t know it until
we got to Ripley and we stopped there and we saw Ralph and a close friend
of his, whose name I don’t recall, but he told us that he had been nominated.
Well, the rest of the time in Minnesota we were just wondering at the
strange turn of fate that would put him into that position. At that time,
though, President Roosevelt seemed to be in fairly good health, so that
we thought Harry would probably be just another Vice President, and I
think that he feared that he would be just that--another Vice President,
be lost in anonymity. Franklin Roosevelt did very little for Vice Presidents.
He ignored them, not with the intention of being arrogant, but a Vice
President had never
[185] been important in any administration.
FUCHS: That’s the way he operated, I guess.
NOLAND: Yes, that’s the way he operated, you are right. And it was a
long time before there was any question of the President’s health failing.
A short time before his death, Bess wrote to me--and said "People
say the President is in failing health, but I don’t believe it."
She sat next to him at dinner the week before and she said, "there’s
nothing the matter with him excepting I think he’s getting a little deaf.
A lot of us are getting a little deaf so I don’t think that’s anything."
But it wasn’t very long until he really was failing and you could see
it in his pictures on television and in the press. I think the truth of
it was that Bess didn’t want to think that he was in failing health. There
was a little
[186]
wishful thinking there, I think, because it was the least
of her desires to be the First Lady.
FUCHS: You never heard him say anything about Mr. Roosevelt’s health?
NOLAND: No. No, I never did.
FUCHS: Did he write you after he was married or did Bess always...
NOLAND: Well, oh, I have a great many--oh, I have two filing cases full
of letters from him, mostly after he was President, but what we wrote
about was largely family history. They began to worry him when he was
elected Senator about his ancestry, who he was, what kind of people were
the Trumans? Of course the reports were exaggerated: he was a nobody,
he was nothing, he was poor, he was ignorant, he was stupid, he was just
a lot of things that he wasn’t.
[187] And so this question of who he was began
to come up, and he would write and say, "Well, who am I?" "Am
I kin to this one, that one, or the other one?" And he began to get
countless letters from people who were named Truman and all of that; and
the people in Kentucky where our families had lived wrote to him: "Did
you come from the Youngs of Shelby County?"...the Greggs, the Trumans,
the Holmses, the Tylers--all of that great raft of people that anybody’s
kin to, you know, and was he kin to them? Well, he didn’t know, he didn’t
know who he was kin to. "Well, Ethel Noland knows, I'll ask her."
And letter followed letter, and we’re still writing.
FUCHS: You don’t keep carbons of them?
NOLAND: No, no, I keep in my diary whom I write to; but some people that
wrote last week were
[188] kin. They sent a picture of Almirinda Truman Sutton,
one of their ancestors.
FUCHS: Is that right?
NOLAND: Yes, I wrote to him--to Harry--"Yes, you remember, they talked
about Uncle Armstead Truman from Shelby County, Kentucky." I said, "Well,
this Almirinda Truman Sutton is Armstead Truman's daughter, and she is
my mother's (and your father's), first cousin way back there. She's long-since
dead, of course."
FUCHS: That's pretty good. Well, you mentioned a letter you got from
him when he was overseas. Do you think you still have that, now?
NOLAND: Oh, I'm pretty sure I have it, yes, but I'll have to hunt.
FUCHS: Scholars will be particularly interested in, you know, letters
of his early days, when he
[189] was young, because there just isn’t much of
that available.
NOLAND: And that’s what I’m trying to fill in, about these things that
I would know, that nobody on earth but me, now, would know. My sister,
Mrs. Ragland, that’s Ardis Haukenberry’s mother, never paid much attention
to those family records. In fact, I’m the only one of the three of us
that did. There’s always one in every family that will do those things,
and the rest sometimes tolerate it, but they generally think it’s rather
dry stuff; so it’s depended on me to tell whom we’re kin to and whom we’re
not kin to and all that. The family legends, someway, are locked up in
my mind and--I don’t know whether it’s a talent or a vice but some people
have that sort of failing. Harry Truman said of himself that he had more
useless junk in his mind that nobody cared anything about
[190] than any person
in the world; well, I think I’m just another one that has a little different
kind of junk in my mind. It's like an old attic that just needs cleaning
out and I think I’m merely cleaning out a lot of junk by telling all of this.
FUCHS: Well, it’s a good idea to get these things down. Any incidents
you can think of at all, why, we’d like to record them. Did you see him
many times as President?
NOLAND: Yes, they came back every summer for awhile and they came back
at Christmas often, and then we were there while he was President. Oh,
we kept up with them pretty well, as well as people living as quietly
as we did could keep up with two such busy people. And they found a good
deal of time for their friends and relatives.
FUCHS: Did you attend the inauguration in ‘45--the
[191] swearing in with Roosevelt?
NOLAND: No.
FUCHS: That was during the war, of course, and wasn't very large. You
went in '48?
NOLAND: We went in '48.
FUCHS: Anything in that connection that might be of interest?
NOLAND: Well, I don't know of anything of historical importance but,
of course, it was an experience. They were living in Blair House then,
and of course, we went to the White House to see how they were getting
along with the repairs and all of that; but it was a great time to be
there and see all the dignitaries, one thing stands out in my mind. We
were present when Dean Acheson was sworn in as Secretary of State. We
had gone to Harry's office that morning and he
[192] said, "Don’t go yet,
because they’re going to swear in my Secretary of State in a few minutes,"
and so we were present. The Judge Vinson of the Supreme Court, from Kentucky
swore him in. Mrs. Acheson was present and so was Charley Ross, Harry’s
Press Secretary, and a number of other people were there and it was a
pleasure to see the ceremony. I remember when we were watching the inaugural
parade the Achesons sat next to us in the closed-in place because, of
course, it was cold--bitterly cold, but not as bad as when Kennedy was
inaugurated, but cold.
And, of course, we went to the Inaugural Ball and to the "gala,"
and all of those festivities, and a round of receptions. Mr. and Mrs.
Davies who had been Ambassador to Russia had a big reception at their
palatial home which they called "Tregeron," I believe.
[193] I suppose
the idea of that name Tregeron was from his wife’s family’s business.
She was Marjorie Post, and they’re the ones that manufacture all that
Postum stuff and other cereals. And trigo is the Spanish word for
wheat, isn’t it, and I think that they probably made up a name for this
beautiful home. It was a very grand affair and we had shopped hard and
long and earnestly for the clothes that we had to take; and of course,
it was a very brilliant crowd that went to these different receptions--oh,
any number of them, day after day, during those three or four days, but
this is outstanding because of that home and because of the great number
of Russian relics that they had there. It was like going through a museum.
The time was all too short. We were supposed to stay, of course, only
a few minutes in each place; but, oh, the icons that
[194] they had and the
Russian Easter eggs, you know--just beautiful. There were cabinets of
those jeweled, gold and silver Russian eggs; because Easter was the old
Russian time for exchanging gifts, and not Christmas--not very much. They
celebrated the Epiphany, Twelfth Night, but Easter was the time when you
gave gifts, and it was something about eggs nearly every time. And the
silver and goldsmiths in Paris made fortunes designing and making these
jeweled eggs and the Davies had collected them in great numbers, because
the Russian nobility was running for their lives after the Russian Revolution
and if they could get out of there they would sell anything or everything
for a song, you might say, to get away. And so it was a good time for
collectors. I’ve wondered since the Davies family broke up, what became
of those priceless things.
[195]
FUCHS: I would like to see that. I didn’t know there was such a thing as that.
Was Harry very close to Vivian, say, from the time he got out of high
school and when he went back on the farm?
NOLAND: Vivian married in 1911, which was eight years, I believe, before
Harry married, and there was a time in there when Vivian was busy with
his work and his young family; but those two brothers were remarkably
close, all of their lives, more so I think in later years even than they
were at that date, because they were going their separate ways and they
had their own affairs. But Vivian had a great deal of judgment; he didn’t
care much about books--sitting down and reading a book was about the last
thing he’d want to do, but he had great judgment , and he was a good judge
of character. His advice was sound and Harry knew it and
[196] depended a great
deal on his judgment of people and of circumstances in general.
FUCHS: Did he graduate from high school?
NOLAND: No, he didn't. He didn't like school particularly. He did fairly
well in it but after a year or so in high school that was enough; he didn't
want any more of it.
FUCHS: He was about two or three years younger than Harry, is that right?
NOLAND: Harry was born in '84--there was a little more than two years
difference in their ages.
FUCHS: Then what did he do immediately after he dropped out of high school?
Is that when he went to Kansas City?
NOLAND: Yes, they must have gone to Kansas City about that time. I don't
remember what he
[197] did though.
FUCHS: Well, I believe he was in a bank with Harry.
NOLAND: Yes, I think he was, but being in a bank was another one of the
things he wouldn’t have cared much about. It was just something to do
to get a little money.
FUCHS: He was exempted from the draft in World War I because of his marital status?
NOLAND: That is true, now Vivian was much more gregarious in a way. Vivian
always liked the girls and he had a little group of friends and they had
quite a good time when they lived here. I know, one of the girls was Mary
Hinde, the sister of Edgar Hinde, and aunt of the present Postmaster,
and of course they were very young and we always thought, well, "Mary
[198]
probably will be the girl for him." But, no, when he went to the
farm he kind of forgot his Independence friends. There was quite a lively
lot of nice young people there in the country and he began to make friends--in
fact, he’d known some of them a long time, but hadn’t been thrown in with
them much. There were the Babcocks, I remember, the Strodes, and the Campbells--the
three Campbell girls and the Campbell boy, James, and the Craigs, the
Moores, and many more. It wasn’t long until Vivian was engaged and married.
FUCHS: Vivian worked for the FHA. Do you know if Harry helped him get that job?
NOLAND: Oh, beyond a doubt he did. I imagine he did.
FUCHS: You don’t recall much in connection with that?
[199] NOLAND: No, I didn’t know much about that.
FUCHS: What about 1948? Were you confident of victory over Dewey?
NOLAND: Oh, no, I wasn’t. I was confident of defeat. Oh, it was terrible,
and I just could not bear to think of how crushed he would be at that
time. I was very miserable when I thought about it during that entire
campaign. It was a campaign when bitter things were said. Everything disagreeable
that could be said was said, and all I could hope for was "This too
will pass. It can’t last forever."
Then the day came for election and Broadcasting Company asked if they
might set up a broadcasting station here--and they set it up in the front
room. We thought, "If it will help them any, yes, go ahead and set
it up, but we’re not interested at all."
[200]
Along in the evening the returns had begun to come in. We were sitting
in the next room trying to read our paper or something because we hated
to hear that everything was going against him. One of the men said, "Don’t
you want to hear this? It’s getting better, you’d better come in."
And so we went into the front room, and it did get better, and our friends
began to drop in, and we had a roomful. We began to serve coffee; we began
to hunt for cookies and doughnuts and something to eat; and we began to
get pretty cheerful. And that went on all night long. And the next morning
at the time when the election was conceded, we had not been to bed, and
we both taught school--my sister was a principal of a school and I taught
in Northeast Junior High--and all we could do was go up and wash up a
little bit and change our
[201] dresses and go to school. I said they had conceded.
No, but it began to look more hopeful. I still couldn’t believe that he
had won it. And I went to school without knowing whether he did win or
not. And along about 10 o’clock, I had a break at school, a free hour,
and one of the men, Louis Nebgen was his name (he’s still there), came
upstairs and said, "Don’t you want to come down? I’ve got the radio
going. Don’t you want to come down and hear the returns?"
I said, "No, I don’t want to hear it."
He said, "Well, you’d better come. It sounds pretty good."
Reluctantly, I went down there and sure enough the word did come while
I was in Louis Nebgen’s room as we were listening and he had won it. So
I was that slow in believing that he has really going to win it, because
[202]
nothing in the world could have seemed more hopeless. And here was H.
Y. Kaltenborn, you know, right at the last, and the Chicago Tribune
coming out with the winner, Dewey, and Harry Truman the defeated candidate
and all of that. Harry never forgave the Tribune and he used to
sort of joke with Kaltenborn, but I think he kind of held it against him
a little, as much as he ever held anything against any man.
FUCHS: That was quite a victory.
NOLAND: An unbelievable victory. Nothing short of a miracle to me.
FUCHS: Is there anything that you can think of that we should record
about his post-presidential career or anything more about his presidential
career, any anecdotes or incidents when he came back here that seem of
interest, humorous,
[203] or importance? What about the Library? Did he ever
speak of that when he was around here, when he first was thinking about it?
NOLAND: I’m not sure of this, but I think the idea of a library came
to him when he was in Washington. Here were all of those papers, what
to do with them. He remembered that so many of the presidential papers
were lost, that families kept them and their sons would maybe put them
in the hands of a daughter-in-law who didn’t see any use in keeping the
"old stuff" around, and a lot of them were destroyed that really
were of national or even world-wide importance; and I think he saw the
need of having a safe repository for those things. He didn’t know that
it would be here--he thought it might be at Missouri University.
FUCHS: One time he talked about Grandview.
NOLAND: He did talk about Grandview. I think that
[204] Robert Weatherford,
Mayor of Independence, probably was one who persuaded him to make this
the place for them, because there was Slover Park and the city could give
him that as a site for it. And what a wonderful thing it has been for the town!
FUCHS: Yes. Well, that’s about all I have unless you can think of something.
NOLAND: No, I cannot think of anything more.
[205]
Miss Noland recorded the following on September 17, 1965 when visited
for another purpose. The following were present: J. R. Fuchs, Milton F.
Perry (HSTL Museum Curator), Cecil Schrepfer (HSTL Photographer), and
Miss Noland.
PERRY: There's something I've been intending to ask you, Miss Noland,
about Mr. Truman's mother. When they moved from the farm to Grandview,
did she take her furniture with her or was that divided up, and did Mr.
Vivian take some of it, or do you know what occurred? It was about when--1940
or so, wasn't it?
NOLAND: I just don't know about that, Mr. Perry, but I expect they took
their furniture. I think Mary Jane had some of it in her house, yes.
PERRY: Did they own that little house in Grandview before that, or did
they buy it?
NOLAND: They bought that.
FUCHS: Did they move into one home and then Mary
[206] Jane moved...
NOLAND: They moved from the farmhouse, yes, but Mary Jane doesn’t live
in the same house.
FUCHS: That’s what I thought,
NOLAND: No, she moved to another place.
FUCHS: After her mother died, though?
NOLAND: Yes.
PERRY: Well, did they sell that house in Grandview?
NOLAND: I suppose they did sell that first one. I remember it had a fence
around it, you know. They had to keep out so many photographers and reporters
and everybody.
PERRY: Well, let me ask you this: This is something else I’ve wondered.
When they moved off the farm, Mr. Vivian had that one little place.
[207] He lived there, didn’t he?
NOLAND: Yes, he did.
PERRY: Even though they moved away from the farm he had that one little
small part of it that he had owned.
NOLAND: He had built that house on his own land. That land was divided
among the children after a time and that was his own part of it. Then
another division came, Mr. Perry, but sometime after Mr. Harrison Young
died, though.
FUCHS: He died in 1916, didn’t he?
NOLAND: I don’t know. You’re pretty well up on dates.
PERRY: But I wondered exactly, because I knew there were several houses
involved there and I was never quite clear on it.
[208]
NOLAND: Yes, and you know they’ve closed up Vivian’s house and Louella
has gone to Louisburg to live.
PERRY: That’s what I understand.
FUCHS: She was going to tell us an anecdote.
NOLAND: Sunday I was talking about what we were doing. My Sunday school
class is composed of a lot of very pleasant women, among them is Mayme
Piper; and just now she’s on leave to teach a girl’s class. But they’re
all congenial women like her, and so I said, "If you think of any
incidents about Harry Truman or the Truman family, tell me, because I’m
trying to get all the data that I can." So Mrs. R. B. Mitchell said,
"Well, I know one, right now."
And she said when she was in the seventh grade at the old Columbian School,
the principal of the school came in one morning (the principal
[209] was Miss
Caroline Stall), and she said, "I want to introduce these boys to
you older boys and girls;" and she had a string of little boys and
each one had a little brown ribbon bow in his buttonhole. And she said,
"These boys have made a promise that they will never use tobacco
in any form and they’re the ‘Anti-Tobacco Society!’ and I want to introduce
them to you." Among them was little Harry Truman. And indeed he never
has used tobacco, but I have an idea he never would have anyway, because
his father never smoked. Our grandfather Truman never did and Vivian never
did. They were a family of non-smokers. But she was very proud of "Exhibit
A."
FUCHS: The Anti-Tobacco Society. That’s another one of his organizations
we didn’t know about.
NOLAND: Yes, you didn’t know he belonged to that.
[210] Well, I had forgotten it, if I ever knew it.
FUCHS: I guess they thought the older boys were about ready to go on
to high school and they needed some sort of an example.
NOLAND: And the principal thought they might be impressed by the determination
of these small boys; whether they were or not is a question. But at any
rate, here they were.
FUCHS: Who is Mrs. R. B. Mitchell?
NOLAND: They have an undertaking establishment, you know, Henry Mitchell’s
mother. I think she owns a half interest or a large interest in the business,
PERRY: Miss Noland, Jim may have asked you this or Jim may have known:
where are Solomon Young and Mrs. Young buried?
[211]
NOLAND: They’re buried in Forest Hill. They’re buried there and Harry’s
father and mother are there.
PERRY: And where is your grandfather Truman buried?
NOLAND: In Woodlawn, yes. They’re buried on our lot, on the Noland lot.
My grandfather Truman, my grandmother Truman, my grandfather Noland, my
grandmother Noland--well, just a great many of us are buried on that lot.
In fact, there’s only room enough left for my sister, Mrs. Ragland, Ardis
Haukenberry’s mother, and me. That’s all the room out there that’s left.
FUCHS: Was your sister’s name Ruth?
NOLAND: Yes.
FUCHS: She was an older sister, wasn’t she?
NOLAND: Yes, she’s seven years older than I am,
[212] and her husband is buried
there, and her daughter, who was Josephine Ragland Southern. That would
be James Allen Southern’ s first wife.
FUCHS: I guess your older sister didn’t see too much of Harry Truman?
NOLAND: No, she married when I was, oh, twelve or thirteen, and she was
so much older than that gang of cousins, that she never ran around with
us very much. She had her own friends her own age. So, she doesn’t have
many recollections of him except when he was a small boy cousin.
FUCHS: Does she have any documents at all related to the family, that
you know of?
NOLAND: No, she really doesn’t. She’s never been the documentary type.
There’s only one in
[213] every family.
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