Harry Truman Returns to Jackson County Missouri as President Grandview visit

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Harry Truman never missed an opportunity to visit with his mother when he came back to Jackson County. While his jaunt to Grandview was quick after the Memorial Building press conference, he was clearly pleased to see her. They probably met at her home in Grandview, which was located on High Grove.

In fact, just a couple of weeks before Truman's June visit to Jackson County, Harry Truman had flown his mother, Martha Ellen Truman, to Washington for a Mother's Day visit. It was her first visit to the White House. Being the "unreconstructed rebel," as Truman referred to her in his memoirs that she was, she refused to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom in the White House and instead opted to sleep in an adjoining room, which had served as the bedroom for the ladies in waiting who accompanied queens from other countries when they visited the White House.

Martha Ellen (Young) Truman was the daughter of Solomon and Harriet Young. Solomon and Harriet arrived in Jackson County from Shelby County Kentucky in 1841. Solomon Young had been a freighter along the trails and owned a larger farm near Grandview, Missouri. Martha Ellen Young married John A. Truman on December 28, 1881. Over the next few years the couple lived on several Missouri farms and in 1890 the couple moved to Independence, Missouri, at the insistence of Martha Ellen Truman to attend the town's well-respected public schools.

When John A. Truman and Martha Ellen Truman arrived in Independence in 1890 they had three children in tow. Their oldest, Harry Truman, was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri. A younger brother, Vivian, and a younger sister, Mary, rounded out the family.

Harry Truman graduated from Independence High School in 1901 and by 1906 he had joined his father and mother back on the Grandview farm. John A. Truman died in 1914 and Harry Truman worked the farm with his mother, sister, brother, and hired hands until he left for service in World War I. Harry Truman's mother died in 1947.