Girton, Dorothy Papers

The papers of Dorothy Girton consist of copies of pages from her scrapbook featuring newspaper clippings, official invitations from the White House, and programs from political and social events during the administration of President Harry S. Truman.

Size: 2.5 linear inches (about 300 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: No donation of copyright was received with this collection. Documents created by U.S. Government employees in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents in this collection presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Christina Faoro (2016) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

Dorothy Melinda Felker was born in 1901 in Lebanon, Indiana. She went to Sophie Newcomb College and graduated in 1923. After her graduation, she played music professionally for silent films and in churches, and worked as a journalist. She married Fred Girton in 1934. After her marriage, Dorothy served as the society editor of the Miami Herald, and editor of the Democratic Digest, a publication of the Democratic National Committee. In 1948, she wrote the lyrics for a "Truman Victory Song."

The papers of Dorothy Girton consist of copies of pages from her scrapbook featuring newspaper clippings, official invitations from the White House, and programs from political and social events during the administration of President Harry S. Truman. The original scrapbook was retained by the donor. The collection is arranged into a Scrapbook File.

The Scrapbook File contains programs from the Jackson Day Dinner of 1946, the Jefferson Day Dinner of 1947 and the Jefferson – Jackson Day Dinners of 1948 and 1949. It also includes programs from dinners of the Women's National Press Club, the lyrics of the song Dorothy Girton wrote for Truman's victory at the Democratic National Convention in 1948, and a program from that event. Also included are itineraries for two of President Truman's campaign trips, and invitations to the Inauguration of the President and the Presidential Gala in 1949. The series also contains a small amount of correspondence from Bess Wallace Truman.

More information about the role of women in the 1948 Democratic National Convention, the Democratic Party, and the Truman administration can be found in the papers of India Edwards.