Howard P. Hinde Oral History Interview

Photograph of Howard Hinde

NPS

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
WITH
HOWARD P. HINDE

AUGUST 22, 1991
FULTON, MISSOURI

INTERVIEWED BY JIM WILLIAMS
ORAL HISTORY #1991-25
This transcript corresponds to audiotapes DAV-AR #4381-4383

HARRY S TRUMAN NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

EDITORIAL NOTICE

This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for Harry S Truman National Historic Site. After a draft of this transcript was made, the park provided a copy to the interviewee and requested that he or she return the transcript with any corrections or modifications that he or she wished to be included in the final transcript. The interviewer, or in some cases another qualified staff member, also reviewed the draft and compared it to the tape recordings. The corrections and other changes suggested by the interviewee and interviewer have been incorporated into this final transcript. The transcript follows as closely as possible the recorded interview, including the usual starts, stops, and other rough spots in typical conversation. The reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written, word. Stylistic matters, such as punctuation and capitalization, follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition. The transcript includes bracketed notices at the end of one tape and the beginning of the next so that, if desired, the reader can find a section of tape more easily by using this transcript.
Howard P. Hinde and Jim Williams reviewed the draft of this transcript. Their corrections were incorporated into this final transcript by Perky Beisel in summer 2000. A grant from Eastern National Park and Monument Association funded the transcription and final editing of this interview.

RESTRICTION

Researchers may read, quote from, cite, and photocopy this transcript without permission for purposes of research only. Publication is prohibited, however, without permission from the Superintendent, Harry S Truman National Historic Site.

ABSTRACT

Howard P. Hinde, a retired biology professor at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, grew up in Independence, Missouri. Hinde relates many family stories about relatives he shares with Bess W. Truman. He also describes the people and businesses with which he was familiar in Independence and Kansas City during the 1920s and 1930s. Persons mentioned: Tom Hinde, Dorothy Hinde, Helen Hinde, Howard Campbell Hinde, Ina Annice Mauk Hinde, J. C. Penney, Nannie Willock Wallace, Benjamin F. Wallace, Carrie Wallace, John Wood Hinde III, Callie Virginia McIntosh, Walter Rider, Jennie Hinde, Mary Hinde, Virginia Hinde, James O. Hinde, Edgar Hinde, Sr., Willis Hinde, Annie Hinde, J. Stamper Wallace, Bess W. Truman, Harry S Truman, Patrick Henry, Madison Willock, Mary Madison Willock, David Willock, Harriet Lightfoot, Callie Willock Chick, Joseph Chick, Jay McIntosh, Virginia Willock, Frank Gates Wallace, Natalie Ott Wallace, May Wallace, George Porterfield Wallace, Ed Carroll, Charles Jones, Margaret Truman Daniel, Barbara Jones, Thomas Willock, C. S. Willock, Madge Gates Wallace, Warren Tuttle, Edgar Hinde, Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Talley, Roger T. Sermon, Jr., Grace Minor, Maxine Choplin, John Howard Hill, Imina Hill, D. Frederick Wallace, David Frederick Wallace, Jr., Marian Wallace Brasher, Jim Pendergast, and Mary Virginia Willock.

ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH
HOWARD P. HINDE

HSTR INTERVIEW #1991-25
JIM WILLIAMS: This is an oral history interview of Howard P. Hinde. We’re
in his home in Fulton, Missouri, on August 22, 1991. The
interviewer is Jim Williams from the National Park Service, and
Scott Stone from the National Park Service is here running the
recorders.
First of all, I’d like to find out about your background, your
family. Could you tell me where and when you were born?
HOWARD P. HINDE: I was born in Independence, Missouri, in June 1916.
WILLIAMS: And how many were in your family?
HINDE: I had a brother and two sisters.
WILLIAMS: And are you the oldest?
HINDE: I’m the eldest of the lot.
WILLIAMS: Could you give me their names and the order of their births?
HINDE: Yeah, I’m the eldest; my brother Tom was next; my sister Dorothy, who
lives in DeKalb, Illinois, now, third; and Helen was the fourth, last, nine
years after I was born.
WILLIAMS: What were your parents’ names?
HINDE: My father was Howard Campbell Hinde and my mother was Ina Annice
Mauk, M-A-U-K.
WILLIAMS: Were they both from Independence?
HINDE: My father was born in Independence, and my mother was born in Hamilton,
Missouri, next door to J. C. Penney, who was also born there. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: Really?
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HINDE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Where did they meet?
HINDE: Who? J. C. Penney, or my—
WILLIAMS: Your parents.
HINDE: Oh, my parents met in Independence. I guess they’d known one another all
their lives. My mother spent most of her life in Independence.
WILLIAMS: Did she have family there, too?
HINDE: Her mother and sister lived in Independence for quite a while, but then later
in Kansas City.
WILLIAMS: How far back do you personally remember your ancestors?
HINDE: Do I personally remember them?
WILLIAMS: Do you remember your grandparents, for instance?
HINDE: I remember my grandparents very, very well. I remember a number of my
grandfather’s side. I knew at least two brothers of his, and a sister, and on
my grandmother’s side—my Grandmother Hinde this is—I remember
Nannie Wallace, who was my great-great—I think perhaps three greataunts—
and I remember her quite well, and her son and daughter, Ben and
Carrie.
WILLIAMS: Your father’s parents were who?
HINDE: My father’s father was John Wood Hinde III, and my father’s mother was
Callie Virginia McIntosh.
WILLIAMS: And were they natives of Independence?
HINDE: My father’s father was. My father’s mother was born in Illinois, and I can’t
remember the name of the town right this minute.
WILLIAMS: Do you know when they came to Independence?
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HINDE: My grandfather came to Independence when he was about eleven years old,
and he . . . they had a plantation in Kentucky, and in the Civil War the
Union soldiers showed up, and, I guess, from what I remember him saying,
destroyed the house. The family hid in the woods, and then after they had
gone and things had quieted down, they left and migrated to Independence.
I have always wished that I could ask why Independence, why didn’t they
go to St. Louis or some other place, but I never thought of it in those days.
But I remember hearing him talk about hiding in the woods and having the
soldiers there—I suppose burning the house completely, as far as I know.
WILLIAMS: Were they southern sympathizers?
HINDE: Yeah, and slave owners.
WILLIAMS: What did your Grandfather Hinde do for a living?
HINDE: Oh, he was recorder of deeds in Independence for some time. He also sold
insurance for Rider and . . . anyway, one man’s name was Walter Rider,
and I can’t remember the other. It was a jointly-owned insurance agency,
and then subsequent to that, for Noel and Yankee Insurance Company.
They used to have a place down on Lexington Street, just one block below
the square, in about the middle of the block.
WILLIAMS: Where did they live in Independence, your grandparents?
HINDE: Well, my grandmother was orphaned at an early age, and she came to
Independence—and I don’t know the year—to live with Aunt Jennie
Wallace, who was her aunt, a sister to her mother, I guess. She lived with
Aunt Jennie Wallace on the corner of South Liberty and West Ruby, and
then she was married while she lived there. My grandfather and my
grandmother continued to live with Aunt Jennie Wallace, as far as I know,
4
till my father was born. He was born in 1881 in that house, anyway, which
is still standing. And then at a later time, my grandfather built the small
house that is next door to that house, just north of it, and then the family
moved in there. And then subsequently they built a house on South
Noland. I don’t remember the address.
WILLIAMS: Is it near Woodlawn Cemetery?
HINDE: It’s beyond Woodlawn Cemetery. It was almost to . . . what’s the name of
that street that went on . . .? Not Dodgen but . . . [Alton].
WILLIAMS: Twenty-third?
HINDE: It’s Twenty-third in Kansas City, but it has a name in Independence, and
the name escapes me at the moment. I’ll think of it. And then they lived
there until they were too old to help themselves, and then they sold that
house and moved in with my Uncle Edgar.
WILLIAMS: What kind of people were they? What do you remember about their
personalities, your grandparents?
HINDE: My grandfather was a very dignified, considerate man, and very highly
thought of in Independence. My grandmother was . . . I never heard my
grandmother raise her voice at all. A very efficient housekeeper, and she
took care of the family.
WILLIAMS: And they had three sons?
HINDE: They had three sons, although they were scattered throughout the five
children. My father was the eldest, and then his sister Mary, and then
James, and then Edgar, and then Virginia.
WILLIAMS: And of your grandparents’ generation, you said you remember some of
their brothers or sisters?
5
HINDE: I remember my grandfather’s brother Willis, and I remember my
grandfather’s brother James, who lived in Mount Washington, and I knew
James’s family. Willis was a widower without children. I knew his sister
Annie, also, and she was deaf. She had had scarlet fever when she was
about nine years old, and it left her deaf, and somehow or other my mother
learned to sign so that she carried on conversations with my Aunt Annie all
the time. She’d come and stay with us quite a bit.
WILLIAMS: Did you know Carrie Wallace?
HINDE: Very well.
WILLIAMS: Could you tell me about her?
HINDE: She was the librarian. She was what they called an old maid in those days,
and she had what . . . the disease they called palsy, but which was
Parkinson’s, I’m sure now, and her head shook a great deal. She was a
librarian there for many years, and she lived with my Aunt Nannie. Carrie
was rather tall and thin with her hair [rather thin] coiled on top of her head.
WILLIAMS: Was that her mother?
HINDE: Her mother. And then she had a brother, Ben, whom I knew very well. He
raised pigeons out behind Aunt Nannie’s house on North Main Street and
sold them commercially, and he was . . . He later died while I was in high
school, or the first year or two I was in college—I can’t remember the date
now—but I sat up with him with my father, with his body.
WILLIAMS: And which house was that?
HINDE: It was in my Aunt Nannie’s house. He had a house across the street, but he
lay in state in Aunt Nannie’s house. When he died, all the clocks in the
house were stopped, and never started again, as far as I know.
6
WILLIAMS: Is that something typical, or just . . .
HINDE: I guess so. I had never heard of it before, but since I’ve heard of it.
WILLIAMS: So Carrie and Ben were the only two children?
HINDE: The only two children.
WILLIAMS: Of Nannie and . . .?
HINDE: And J. Stamper.
WILLIAMS: Did you know Nannie and J. Stamper?
HINDE: I knew Nannie very well, but I didn’t know J. Stamper. He died in 19 . . .
well, the first decade, 1907 or ‘08, somewhere around there, I don’t know.
WILLIAMS: So Nannie was a great . . . let’s see, a great-great-great-aunt? Something
like that?
HINDE: Let’s see, she was . . . Nannie was my grandmother’s aunt, my father’s
great-aunt, my great-great-aunt. Well, I, of course, remember her mostly as
a child. Well, she died I guess, about 1931 or ’32, somewhere around
there—I’m not sure of the date of that either. But she also had palsy of the
head, and her head shook a lot and it had affected her enunciation of words,
and so I was always rather in awe of her because I couldn’t understand all
she was saying. My mother had no problem at all understanding her. They
used to come out to our house to dinner a great deal, and I’d have to sit
there, and the other kids would too, and be polite to our elders, you know,
and I couldn’t understand a lot she was saying. [chuckling] But I do know
that she had seen Lincoln, and that was very impressive, and I thought,
“Oh, my Lord, she’s” . . . I didn’t think in those terms then, but I thought,
“Oh, she’s so old,” you know? And she really was quite elderly, too. She
was at least ninety-five when she died, and maybe older than that.
7
WILLIAMS: Is Parkinson’s something that’s inherited?
HINDE: I guess it is, at least the tendency to it. But mother and daughter were
identical in this disease, and I don’t know . . . I never did know Carrie when
she didn’t have it, so . . .
WILLIAMS: Where was the library back then?
HINDE: The library, in those days, and even when I went to junior high school there
. . . There was the new junior high school building facing Pleasant down
toward the Baptist church, then there was the library, and then there was the
old Independence High School. And Chrisman had already been built. My
mother and father and Bess Truman all attended that old high school, and I
did too, but it was a junior high when I attended. The library was right in
between those two buildings.
And then sometime after I left, the library burned. It’s sort of an
interesting story. I have heard—and I wasn’t at home so I’m just repeating
what I’ve heard—that Carrie rescued the DAR records, and nothing else got
rescued out of the library. That was the first thing she took out of there, and
that was about all she got out.
WILLIAMS: So do you have relatives then that go back to the Revolution?
HINDE: Yes. In fact, my original grandfather in this country was in attendance on
Wolfe at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham [Quebec], and then he went
back to England, and then somebody . . . some practicing physician wrote
to him and offered or asked him to come in to . . . to take part of his practice
because he was getting old. Which my . . . however many greatgrandfathers—
I think I’m about the sixth generation—and he came back
and settled in Virginia and took over part of the practice, and eventually the
8
whole practice, and he became the family physician for Patrick Henry and
some other people. Then subsequently he became a Revolutionary
physician and served throughout the Revolution without any pay. And after
the Revolution he was granted 20,000 acres of land in Kentucky in lieu of
pay for what he did during the Revolution. He sold some of the land and
kept 10,000 acres, I understand. And eventually they moved to Kentucky,
built a house there and had quite an establishment, from all I have heard
from relatives. I had some elderly cousins in California. When I was in
Stanford we used to see a great deal of them, and they told about their
mother and father going back to stay at the plantation in Kentucky, and
they’d stay two or three months. It was one of those things.
WILLIAMS: So was this ancestor a Hinde?
HINDE: You mean in Kentucky?
WILLIAMS: In the Revolutionary War.
HINDE: Yes, they were all Hindes. I don’t know . . . well, my grandmother’s
lineage is the same as Bess Truman’s lineage, back to the Revolution.
WILLIAMS: Through the Willocks?
HINDE: The Willocks, yeah.
WILLIAMS: Did you know . . . let’s see, your great-grandmother was Mary . . .?
HINDE: Madison Willock.
WILLIAMS: And she married a McIntosh. [I think his name was James Madison
McIntosh.]
HINDE: She married a McIntosh.
WILLIAMS: Do you know them at all?
HINDE: I knew my grandmother’s brother, Charles. He was crippled. I didn’t
9
know Mary Madison, no. I have a photocopy of a page of the family Bible
in which the Willocks have all been entered, and the date of their birth,
starting in 17-something. Well, I’ve got a copy of it in here if you’d like to
look at it. Or maybe you’ve already seen it.
WILLIAMS: No.
HINDE: How am I going to get out of this to show you? [chuckling] [tape turned
off]
WILLIAMS: I wonder who has the Bible now.
HINDE: I don’t know who has the Bible now. There’s a message on the . . . an
interpretation of it on the back. But if you look, now that’s in Carrie’s
handwriting, and she gave it to the four of us for a Christmas present [see
appendix, item 1]. And since I was the only one that had any interest in
genealogy, I have it; but I did make copies of it, and all the others have a
copy. And you’ll notice at the bottom of the page right there, there’s a
name written in pencil, Mary Madison? That’s my great-grandmother, and
Carrie said that Aunt Nannie wrote that in at the time of my greatgrandmother’s
birth.
WILLIAMS: So there were fifteen children in this?
HINDE: Yeah, it’s . . . what’s the first date?
WILLIAMS: Well, David Willock was born August 18, 1765.
HINDE: Seventeen sixty-five. All right, this is the Bible that he started, the family
Bible that he started. Then his son . . .
WILLIAMS: Robert Willock was born in 1794.
HINDE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: David Willock, Jr., born August 1, 1802. Rachel Willock was born
10
September 18, 1804.
HINDE: Now, I’ve got . . . let me see a minute. I’ve written it out here, see? This is
Great-great-great-grandfather Willock up here, this is Great-greatgrandfather
Willock there, and . . .
WILLIAMS: There was a General David Willock back . . . Which one is that, David, Jr.?
He was the father of Virginia, Mary, Callie, Nannie, and five other
children.
HINDE: All right, here is Virginia down here. This says “Grandchildren born
1824,” and Cousin Carrie has written out there “ours,” so that must be our
line. This has really not been worked out very well. And just shortly
before Bess died, she sent me the whole rundown on the family
genealogical relationships, and she thought it would be helpful to me, and
she left out Mary Madison. [chuckling] And I have never been able to
figure this out. But I think sometime I’m going to get busy and do some
more work on it.
WILLIAMS: Well, this is a chart that one of our museum aides was . . . It’s not complete
by any means, but it gives an idea of how you are related to Bess Truman
[see appendix, item 2]. And I guess it’s somewhat confusing because two
Wallace brothers married . . .
HINDE: Yeah, they married Willocks, yeah.
WILLIAMS: And they were half-sisters, so you have Stamper and Benjamin Wallace.
HINDE: Yeah. Well, see, I never did know that he was a general. That’s news to
me, and it doesn’t say anything on there about him being . . .
WILLIAMS: I don’t know where she got that. I think she was working from what the
Truman Library has.
11
HINDE: I knew about Harriet Lightfoot, yeah. And Nannie Willock married J.
Stamper Wallace, and she was a half-sister of Mary Madison Willock, who
was my great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother. She was my
grandfather’s grandmother and my . . . I mean, my father’s grandmother
and my great-great-grandmother, and I knew that they were half-sisters,
yeah.
WILLIAMS: So you remember Nannie. Did you know Callie Chick? Callie Willock
married Joseph Chick, it says.
HINDE: No, I didn’t know her.
WILLIAMS: Mary Willock married J. McIntosh, James Madison, and that’s your great—
HINDE: That’s my grandmother—my great-grandmother, yeah.
WILLIAMS: And then did you know . . . No, Virginia Willock died in 1903 or ’08 or
something.
HINDE: Let’s see, I think Virginia Willock is Aunt Jennie Wallace, and she was my
grandmother’s aunt, and she’s the one, I think, who reared my grandmother.
I think this is right, and I think that she is the one who owned that house on
the corner of South Liberty and West Ruby.
WILLIAMS: Here’s her obituary. It says she died at the home of her sister at 817 North
Main.
HINDE: Well, that’s Aunt Nannie’s house, 817. A brick house? Yeah.
WILLIAMS: And that would be Mrs. Truman’s grandmother from her father.
HINDE: Yeah. Boy, you know more than I do about this.
WILLIAMS: What we’re trying to find out is more of the personality of the people and
how much they saw each other. We can get to that, I guess. Did you see
your Wallace cousins? How aware were you of that branch of the family,
12
Mrs. Truman’s branch, when you were growing up?
HINDE: I was very much aware of it, yeah. In fact, Frank Wallace married Natalie
Ott. Am I right about that? And Natalie Ott and my mother were quite
close friends. They were in the same class in high school. And May
Wallace was George’s wife, and I have run into her occasionally. In fact,
the last time I saw her, I think, was at Mrs. Carroll’s funeral. Ed Carroll
was a lawyer in Independence, and his daughter is the wife of Charles
Jones, who taught history up at William Woods, and they’re very close
friends of ours. Her mother was visiting here and died, and so we went
over to the funeral; and May Wallace was at the funeral, and I haven’t seen
her since then.
WILLIAMS: Where did you go to school growing up?
HINDE: I went to William Chrisman High School. I went to McCoy School through
six grades, I went to junior high school through my freshman year, seven,
eight, nine, and then to William Chrisman High, the old one out on Maple.
WILLIAMS: And you graduated when?
HINDE: In 1934. Then I went to Park College for four years, graduated in 1938,
with a B.S., A.B., and then I went to the University of Oklahoma for two
years, was a T.A., got my M.S. there, and then went to Yale as a T.A. to
work on my Ph.D. And I was there two years, and the second year I was
there I was deferred from Army service, because the war started in between
there, and deferred because I was teaching premed students. But that
ended, and they said no more deferrals, so then I went and . . . Yale
developed a hospital unit that turned out to be a general hospital established
in Auckland, New Zealand, and I went with that group to Auckland. I was
13
stationed there for eight or nine months, then was sent back here to get a
commission.
WILLIAMS: When I talked to you on the phone, you said something about Margaret
Truman went to Sunday school with you.
HINDE: At the First Presbyterian Church. Well, she was in a grade . . . She’s
Helen’s age, or about Helen’s age. I don’t know whether she and Helen
were both born in 1925.
WILLIAMS: Margaret was in ’24.
HINDE: Twenty-four, okay. But they were in high school together and . . . Yeah,
because Barbara Jones was born in ’26, so it was ’24, ’25, and ’26 for those
three. And she came to Sunday school at the First Presbyterian Church
because there was no Sunday school at Trinity, and so I remember her
mostly as a small child, because I didn’t see her much after she grew up.
But I’ve read all her books. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: What’s your earliest memory of Bess Wallace Truman?
HINDE: I really don’t know. It was in childhood because they used to call on Aunt
Nannie, too, and it was customary to go out there on Sunday afternoon
when she received visitors. I can’t tell you my first memory of her.
WILLIAMS: What about of Harry Truman? Was he a senator by then?
HINDE: No, he was . . . In fact, the first I really remember about him was in his . . .
He was a haberdasher in Kansas City, and I think it was during the
Depression that the haberdashery failed, and that’s really the first thing I
remember about him. Then later on he became a judge, a county judge, and
I remember at some time there was a celebration in Independence and there
were some girls that were chosen to be maids of honor for him while he
14
was there, and my sister Dorothy was one of the maids of honor. And it
was in the middle of the summer because I remember it was beastly hot,
and the whole thing, a lot of the ceremonies anyway, took place on the
south entrance to the courthouse there, the south steps to the courthouse.
Then there were others that . . . I remember there was a pageant that
included almost the whole town for the 100th anniversary of Independence,
or of Missouri as a state—1827 to 1927—and Truman took part in that
performance, and those are my earliest memories of him. I . . . okay.
WILLIAMS: Go ahead.
HINDE: Well, I was just going to say I remember other performances when Aunt
Nannie was involved. She was involved in that pageant celebrating the
statehood of Missouri. There was another big parade and celebration, and
she rode in the parade sidesaddle wearing her wedding dress, and she was .
. . I think she was about ninety years old then. [chuckling] She had a lot of
spunk.
I remember a story my Aunt Virginia told. Somebody bet Aunt
Nannie that she couldn’t climb the water tower. If she could climb the
water tower she’d get a new dress. And she climbed clear to the top of the
water tower, and she was not a young woman at that time. You probably
don’t remember the water tower, but out there on Main Street just close to
her house there’s now, I think, a tank, shaped something like that? Well,
there used to be just a straight tower that was painted black, and at the
bottom there was a reservoir. And I remember this so well because we
lived out there for a while. There was a large, Victorian house facing
Liberty Street, but the lot ran back. Then there was an alley going along
15
here, and then the reservoir over here, and we had . . . I was six years old at
this time, I guess, and we had very strict orders not to go near that reservoir.
And so, of course, my picture of Aunt Nannie is climbing that straight
black tower, which is what she did, and not the present one. But she won
the dress anyway. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: What did you do for fun growing up?
HINDE: Me?
WILLIAMS: And your brothers and sisters.
HINDE: What kids usually do: played games and had pets and . . . I did a lot of
gardening because I always liked it, even when I was a small child. My
mother would give me a part of the garden that I could take care of. Then
later on I did larger ones. Finally, when my grandfather got to the point
where he couldn’t garden, we had a very large vegetable garden, which my
father and I worked, and then we’d share the produce with my
grandparents.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever hear much about David Willock Wallace, Mrs. Truman’s
father?
HINDE: David Willock Wallace, I’ve heard of. I don’t remember ever seeing him.
His wife was Madge.
WILLIAMS: Right. He died in 1903.
HINDE: Well, see, then I wouldn’t have seen him then.
WILLIAMS: Was his name ever brought up? Or how he died?
HINDE: No, I don’t remember that.
WILLIAMS: You knew Madge Wallace?
HINDE: Well, I knew who she was, yes. She was . . . she spent a great deal of time
16
indoors at home, and I know Bess stayed home a lot of the time when she
probably should have been in Washington helping take care of Harry there,
because of her mother.
[End #4381; Begin#4382]
WILLIAMS: I’m trying to think, one of those Willock girls, Virginia or maybe it says in
here, they ran off the soldiers in the Civil War. They wouldn’t let them
come into the church.
HINDE: I have never heard that.
WILLIAMS: Here it is. It’s in this [reading from Virginia Wallace obituary, Jackson
Examiner, May 29, 1908]: “During the war there was an effort to take the
property of the Maple Avenue Methodist Church in Independence. It was
such a movement as the men were powerless to prevent, most of them
being away serving in the Confederate army. A number of the women of
the church went to the church and remained there night and day, and dared
to the soldiers to take them out by force. Mrs. Wallace was one of these.”
Virginia Wallace.
HINDE: Yes, that was the old Methodist church on Maple. It was next to the
property on which the Memorial Building stands now. Then the church
was on the next corner, and it was rather ornate, and far prettier than the one
they’ve got now, for gracefulness, you know, and I used to go there with
my grandmother. Not regularly but on occasions.
WILLIAMS: So they were Methodists?
HINDE: Yes. Well, I think that she was a Presbyterian. I think that McIntosh was a
Presbyterian, and so I think he raised her, during the time that she lived at
home, as a Presbyterian. But then when she moved in with Aunt Jennie, I
17
guess she became a Methodist; and my grandfather was a Methodist, so
they just continued to go to that church.
WILLIAMS: Were you Presbyterian?
HINDE: I was a Presbyterian at that time.
WILLIAMS: How did that happen? From your parents?
HINDE: Well, this is another story. My father was a Southern Methodist, my
mother went to the Methodist church on the corner of Delaware and Maple,
which was called the Watson Memorial Methodist Church, and it was
strictly northern. My mother and father got married, but neither one of
them would go to the other’s church because my father flatly refused to go
to a northern church and my mother just as flatly refused to go to a southern
church. So they came to an agreement and said they would walk one block
each way from their church and they’d go to the one where they met, and
the one where they met was the Presbyterian church, and so that’s how they
became Presbyterians. So then they reared all four kids as Presbyterians.
WILLIAMS: So you grew up at the First Presbyterian Church.
HINDE: Yeah, but then later I reneged and went back to the Church of England,
which the family had been all along anyway. [chuckling] They took a lot
of devious routes through religion.
WILLIAMS: While we’re on the subject of Virginia and this obituary, you might want to
look at the pallbearers. I don’t know if . . . I know some of those people.
HINDE: Thomas Willock, David Willock, C. S. Willock, Howard Hinde is my
father, James O. Hinde was my uncle, my father’s younger brother. He was
the middle son between Howard and Edgar.
WILLIAMS: Who was C. S. Willock?
18
HINDE: I don’t know C. S. Willock. David Willock . . . I don’t know, there are so
many David Willocks, I don’t know him either. What date was this, 1908?
Well, see, that’s probably all before my time, yeah.
WILLIAMS: It looks like the Wallaces and the Hindes and the Willocks were all
entwined.
HINDE: They were, very much so. There were some political factors in here, too. I
think my mother was a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and they were all
Democrats, and so my mother of course was against Harry as president
because he was a Democrat, and she would not consider voting for a
Democrat, no matter what. And my father, in the same way, would not
consider voting for a Republican. So, of course, if a Republican ran, like
Hoover, then he wouldn’t vote at all.
WILLIAMS: We’ve heard that Madge Wallace was a Republican.
HINDE: She might have been, I don’t know. If she was, she was in the closet most
of the time. [chuckling] She well might have been, but I don’t know.
WILLIAMS: You said your grandfather was the recorder of deeds?
HINDE: Oh, yes.
WILLIAMS: Would he have known Mr. Truman through that county connection?
HINDE: Well, he might have. They probably all first knew Truman when he started
going with Bess. That’s probably when they all got to know him. But this
is a question I . . . I know they were married in 1919 because that was the
year my brother was born, so I remember that date. I don’t remember, I
think it was in June but I’m not sure.
WILLIAMS: Do you remember being at the Wallace, what is now the Truman, home
growing up?
19
HINDE: I was there, but I don’t remember a lot. It was always there, you know?
WILLIAMS: Were you at the houses up on Main Street more than that?
HINDE: I was up there a lot, with relative frequency, I would say. Mostly because I
had to go. My parents said we all had to go, you know. We went as a
family to call on Aunt Nannie, just as every Sunday of my life I had to go to
my grandparents’.
WILLIAMS: There weren’t then regular occasions that you would gather with the
Wallace relatives?
HINDE: No, we never . . . well, we never did things like celebrate Christmas with
them or anything like that, no.
WILLIAMS: No picnics or . . .?
HINDE: No. My Aunt Virginia was married in 1929, and that’s the first family
wedding I remember, and it’s quite possible that they were at the wedding,
because I know there were . . . Warrene Tuttle that owned that house that is
now the [Callaway County] historical society is a cousin of mine on the
Hinde side, and she and her mother were at the wedding, I remember.
WILLIAMS: We were just admiring that house.
HINDE: Haven’t they done a nice job? Yeah, they really have.
WILLIAMS: It looks a lot better than what I remember it being.
HINDE: Oh, it looks a lot better than it did with the black under the eaves, yeah.
Yeah, she and my grandfather . . . her mother and my grandfather were first
cousins.
WILLIAMS: So even here in Fulton there’s a connection.
HINDE: Even here in Fulton, right. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: What were your parents like?
20
HINDE: My father was a great deal like his father: very quiet, very nice to people,
considerate. And my mother was more out . . . He was more introspective,
my mother was much . . . very gregarious and outgoing. And not only that,
she was a singer and she loved performing. For many years, she sang at
almost everything that occurred in Independence, and very frequently in
Kansas City. She also belonged to little theater, and she was in everything
else in town, too, plus being on the school board, and she usually wound up
president of everything she got into. [chuckling] She was a great deal more
gregarious than either I or my father would ever be.
WILLIAMS: So she was something of a civic leader.
HINDE: Yes, she was into everything.
WILLIAMS: And your uncles, one of your uncles was postmaster?
HINDE: Edgar, and then his son Edgar, Jr., succeeded him.
WILLIAMS: Did it help that they were related to the Truman family?
HINDE: It probably did. I don’t know whether that had any . . . I’m sure it must
have had some influence.
WILLIAMS: But they would have been just as involved with Mrs. Truman’s family as
you all were.
HINDE: Although I think that Edgar was closer to them, although I don’t think he
ever celebrated things like Christmas with them. Because when I was
growing . . . all the time I was growing up, my grandparents would leave
their house and go to my Aunt Mary’s, which was next to theirs, and then
just progress through the kids, and gather them up as we went, and their
families, and then we’d all end up again at her house. And that included
Edgar as well, and we’d have Christmas dinner at her house. So I know he
21
didn’t spend Christmas celebration with them. But I think that he may have
played bridge with them. He and Anna, his wife, may have played bridge
with them quite a bit. I know that they did with the Carrolls a great deal.
WILLIAMS: When Mr. Truman became senator, did that change anything, as far as your
family was concerned?
HINDE: No. No. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: Did you see them less often?
HINDE: Well, he lived in Washington. I didn’t see him much at all. I might see him
when he was home. What year did he become senator? I don’t remember.
WILLIAMS: Thirty-four.
HINDE: Thirty-four? Well, see, I was . . . I went to college, and then I wasn’t in
Independence much after that, although I would work in the summer at the
Tasty Ice Cream store, which was on the west side of the square. I
remember that in the very hot weather Mrs. Truman and Margaret would
come in late in the afternoon, about 3:30 or 4:00, and have an ice cream
soda, which I made for them very often.
WILLIAMS: What flavor?
HINDE: I don’t remember that. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: I’ve heard they both loved chocolate.
HINDE: I was going to say chocolate, but I’m not sure, yeah.
WILLIAMS: Was that the old-fashioned kind of ice cream soda?
HINDE: The old-fashioned kind. It cost ten cents, right. You put the chocolate in
the bottom and you’d put ice cream in and make a paste out of it, and then
you put more ice cream in and the liquid, carbonated water.
WILLIAMS: How did you address them? First names?
22
HINDE: Well, I never called Margaret anything but . . . We used to call her Mary
Margaret, the whole name, which was customary in Independence.
WILLIAMS: Was Bess “Mrs. Truman,” or . . .?
HINDE: I would never have been allowed to call her “Bess.” Even with Carrie
Wallace, I called her “Cousin Carrie” and “Cousin Ben.” So it had to be
“Cousin Bess.”
WILLIAMS: And that’s because she was of another generation?
HINDE: Yeah, that’s right. Too much my senior.
WILLIAMS: When he became president, what was the family reaction?
HINDE: I wasn’t there. I was in the army.
WILLIAMS: What did you think that you had a relative who was president?
HINDE: Well, it was hard to believe. I knew he was vice president, but I didn’t have
any idea that Roosevelt was near death, you know, and then . . . I remember
I was stationed in Camp Blanding, Florida, at the time, and they had a
formation of the hospital staff and announced that Truman was now
president, that Roosevelt had just died. And I was surprised.
WILLIAMS: Were your colleagues aware of your connection? Being from
Independence, did they suspect it?
HINDE: I don’t think so.
WILLIAMS: Did you make it known?
HINDE: No, I never talked about it.
WILLIAMS: Was any of your family ever invited to the White House?
HINDE: My brother was there, yeah. I probably could have gone, too. It just never
worked out that . . . I remember—this just came to mind—when I was
teaching in San Francisco, Harry Truman was there working on the U.N.,
23
establishment of the U.N., and we invited him to dinner. But Bess wrote a
note saying that it would be impossible for them to come because they were
so booked up that there was just no way she could do it. I still have the note
here someplace.
WILLIAMS: Do you think she would have liked to have come?
HINDE: Well, she didn’t sound as if she was totally disgusted, anyway. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: I’m just wondering if they would go out of their way to accommodate their
relatives.
HINDE: Well, I think that family meant a lot to her, I really think it did. See, when
my father . . . my father was born on the corner, and Bess was born right
across the street on West Ruby—that’s where her father’s house was at that
time—so they really lived close to one another in the early years. My
father was older than Bess. I don’t know how many years, but he was older
than she.
WILLIAMS: She was born in 1885.
HINDE: Well, see, he was five years older—four years older—he was born in ‘81.
WILLIAMS: So they would have known each other as children.
HINDE: As children, yeah.
WILLIAMS: And so even though they were second cousins . . .
HINDE: They just lived right across the street, yeah.
WILLIAMS: They knew each other.
HINDE: Yeah. And they were all friends of the Waggoners [as in Bingham-
Waggoner], who owned the big place . . . Right now there’s a house across
the street from where my father was born. But in those days, it was open
and that was all Waggoner property over there.
24
WILLIAMS: So that was on . . . you said the corner of Liberty and West Ruby.
HINDE: West Ruby. South—
WILLIAMS: Which corner was your house on, or the Hinde house?
HINDE: My house? When my father . . . It was Aunt Jennie Wallace’s house, and it
was on the southeast corner. And then right next to it is a smaller house
that my grandfather built after my father was born. They kept chickens and
a cow. You know, it was not the Independence of today. [chuckling]
WILLIAMS: They had a big lot?
HINDE: A lot that went quite far back, yeah.
WILLIAMS: And then another few houses down was Mrs. Truman’s birthplace.
HINDE: No, see, here’s South Liberty, and West Ruby comes along here. My father
was born on this corner, Bess was born over here, across the street on West
Ruby.
WILLIAMS: On the south side.
HINDE: The south side of West Ruby, right. And then my grandfather built a house
right next to Aunt Jennie Wallace’s house.
WILLIAMS: On the north side of Ruby?
HINDE: No, it was on the east side of South Liberty.
WILLIAMS: Okay, so it faced Liberty.
HINDE: It faced Liberty. The house where my father was born also faced Liberty,
and it’s the corner house; and those two houses, to the best of my
knowledge, are still there. The last time I was in Independence, which has
been quite some time—
WILLIAMS: So their address was Liberty Street and not Ruby.
HINDE: That’s right, their address was South Liberty. And then in subsequent
25
years, that house of my grandfather’s was bought by the uncle and aunt of
Marian Talley, the opera singer. She used to visit there a lot as she was
pretty close to her uncle and aunt.
WILLIAMS: What are your brothers and sisters involved in now? What professions?
HINDE: My brother’s dead; my sister Helen was a nurse for many years, and she’s
retired; and my sister Dorothy was an English teacher for many years, and
she’s retired.
WILLIAMS: Did you all go to the same schools in Independence, the same pattern:
McCoy, Palmer Junior High, and then William Chrisman?
HINDE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Was it expected that you would go to college?
HINDE: It was just taken for granted, yeah.
WILLIAMS: You weren’t the first in the family to have done that?
HINDE: My parents didn’t go to college. My Grandmother Hinde had been to
college. I don’t know about my Grandfather Hinde’s education. And I
think that none of my father’s brothers or sisters went to college, except for
Virginia, the youngest one, and she went to William Woods and then to
MU, and graduated. I think she graduated from William Woods in 1921,
and from MU two years later.
WILLIAMS: Was it difficult during the Depression?
HINDE: Very difficult. Very difficult. There wasn’t . . . We never knew . . . In fact,
I very often didn’t know whether I was going to be able to go back the next
year or not. But we managed.
WILLIAMS: Would there be more than one in college at the same time?
HINDE: Yes, my brother and I were . . . I was a senior the year my brother was a
26
freshman, and then . . . Well, my brother and my elder sister Dorothy were
only a year apart, and they were all of an age with Edgar, Jr., so they were
all in school at the same time.
WILLIAMS: What did your Uncle James Hinde do?
HINDE: He worked for the Standard Oil Company in Sugar Creek. Early on, my
father and Uncle James had a grocery store called the Hinde Brothers
Grocery Store, which was a pretty well-known store, and then they sold it,
and James went to work for Standard Oil in Sugar Creek, and my father
went to work for Standard Oil in Kansas City. He was the credit manager
over there.
WILLIAMS: Is that what he did for the rest of his life?
HINDE: Until he retired, and then he went to work for the Independence Hardware
just because he didn’t want to sit around the house. And the Independence
Hardware subsequently burned.
WILLIAMS: Where was that at?
HINDE: That was on the west side of Main Street in the block between Lexington
and Kansas, where the old city hall is. That’s Kansas, isn’t it?
WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm. You know them better than I do.
HINDE: I haven’t been there for a long time. But then I grew up there, and I just
sometimes forget some of these places. But that’s where the Independence
Hardware was. I think there might be an antique shop in there now.
WILLIAMS: Probably. There’s a lot of those there on the square.
HINDE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Where was the grocery store?
HINDE: The grocery store was on the west side of the square. And my
27
grandfather’s Walter Rider Insurance Agency, at the time that my mother
and father were married, was on the south side of the square.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever work at the grocery store? Was that gone?
HINDE: No, I was a very small child when they sold it.
WILLIAMS: What was the square like back then when you were growing up?
HINDE: Oh, it was nothing like it is today. It was a square, and the streetcar tracks
went all the way around it. There was a streetcar that ran out the end of
South Main, and then up to the square, and it would go around the square
and then down North Liberty. They called that streetcar “The Goat,” and
you could pay a nickel and get on there and ride with transfers all over
Kansas City on that nickel in those days. We’d usually transfer at the post
office, or we’d get off and walk down to the post office a block or two with
our transfers, then get on the streetcar for Kansas City if we wanted to go to
Kansas City shopping. And there was parking . . .
The courthouse, when I was very small . . . I must have been in high
school when they put that new courthouse in. The old courthouse is in the
middle of it, it’s enveloped, and . . . But I remember very well when they
closed the old courthouse to tear it down. They had a party in there for the
whole town in that old courthouse, and we went. And then later on, after
the new one was built, they had a dedication and parade and everything.
There used to be a painting hanging in there of Nannie Wallace arriving by
stagecoach in Independence to visit her sister, and I haven’t seen that for
years. I don’t know what happened to it or where it is now, but that used to
be in the courthouse.
WILLIAMS: Which route did the streetcar to Kansas City follow?
28
HINDE: It went down Lexington Street past the old natatorium that was there, and
through Englewood, Maywood, Mount Washington, and then into Kansas
City. I think it turned on Hardesty and went up some way and then down
The Paseo a little bit. And I can’t remember now, but it ended up
downtown, anyway.
WILLIAMS: How long would that take?
HINDE: Take about an hour.
WILLIAMS: So you’d go down there to shop?
HINDE: Yeah, we’d go in there to shop. I’d get sick and . . . I always got sick riding
the streetcar.
WILLIAMS: Motion sickness?
HINDE: Motion sickness, yeah.
WILLIAMS: What was downtown? Like Emery, Bird,Thayer?
HINDE: Emery, Bird, Thayer; Wolff Brothers; John Taylor’s; Jones’ Store, which is
still there, I think; Kresge Stores; Newman Theater; Lowes Midland
Theater.
WILLIAMS: So you didn’t do all your shopping in Independence?
HINDE: Well, no. We wouldn’t go frequently to Kansas City. We might go over
once a month, something like that. Well, yes, my mother did a lot of
shopping at Bundschu’s and Knoepker’s, and we bought all our groceries
from Cook and Sermon’s until they went out of business. In fact, my
mother and Roger Sermon had been in high school together, and she dated
him some when they were in high school.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever “wind the clock” around the square?
HINDE: No. [chuckling] What do you mean by that?
29
WILLIAMS: Well, somebody told me they’d drive around.
HINDE: Oh, around and around and around the square? No, I didn’t.
WILLIAMS: They called it “winding the clock.”
HINDE: Yeah, I never did. We didn’t have a car, so we’d walk around the square.
Every Saturday night we went to town—every Saturday night—and you
wouldn’t do so much shopping as you would do visiting with everybody
you saw, and make it all the way around the square. And by then it was
time to go home because you’d [chuckling] outstayed the stores. It was
much like Fulton, the same sort of atmosphere in the town as we have in
Fulton.
WILLIAMS: Walking up and down Court Street here.
HINDE: Yeah, but, see, you don’t walk around the square here like you did in
Independence. But we knew practically everybody in town. I look at those
old programs for pageants where they’ve listed everybody. I know
practically everybody in town. I have some remembrance of them, maybe
not much, but some.
WILLIAMS: Did you know anyone else around the Trumans over there on Delaware
Street?
HINDE: Yeah, Nolands. Truman’s aunts lived across the street.
WILLIAMS: Were they your teachers?
HINDE: No, they weren’t my teachers. In fact, my mother was friends with them.
In fact, when my mother was in the hospital one time, she and one of the
Miss Nolands shared a room at Independence Sanitarium. And the
Choplins and the Minors. Well, I think Grace Minor just died not too long
ago.
30
WILLIAMS: Did you know Maxine Choplin died a few weeks ago?
HINDE: No, I didn’t. I don’t have any source of information anymore. Mrs.
Carroll’s dead, and she is the one who knew all those people, you know.
And I used to hear when she’d come here to visit. We’d catch up on the
Independence news. After my mother died . . . Up until that time, she was a
good source of information.
WILLIAMS: So your parents lived there all throughout their lives?
HINDE: My mother lived there almost her entire life. My father did live there his
entire life. He died just exactly two blocks from where he was born in
1881. He died in ’64, the year after I came here.
WILLIAMS: How much contact did you have with the Trumans after they retired to
Independence?
HINDE: To Independence? Very little, because I wasn’t there. I think my father
and mother did. I remember one time when we were in Independence right
after the Truman Library opened that Harry took us through the library,
took my wife and I through the library, and showed us a lot. My father
called him up and said we were in town and would like to see it, and so he
said, “Come on up,” and so we did and went through. I also remember
when that stamp was issued for Harry Truman, and they issued it at the
library, and I went over for that. My Uncle Edgar was supposed to shoot
off the cannon at a certain time, and he got the time wrong and shot the
cannon too early. And I remember my cousin Edgar, Jr. saying, “Oh, my
God!” [chuckling] That’s sort of a joke in the family ever since then, that
Uncle Edgar got a little carried away and shot the cannon off too soon.
[chuckling]
31
WILLIAMS: From what you knew of him, how would you describe Harry Truman?
HINDE: Well, he was . . . I don’t quite know how to . . . He had a very brusque
manner, you know, very . . . I don’t know what manner I would call it, but,
you know, very, very upfront, very sharp, and said exactly what he thought
about a situation. But he was also courteous to people and considerate,
unless he thought you were fake, and he didn’t take much to fakes. Very
industrious, very hardworking, and I think very honest. In fact, I think he
made a very good president, although at the time I know there was
skepticism about whether he would or not. But he did. He was involved
with Pendergast, but I don’t think that he was . . . I’ve never heard in the
family that he was corrupted by Pendergast at all. But he was also a very
loyal person. My father and my grandfather both had the same
characteristics. Although they weren’t related by birth to Harry Truman,
they all had about the same standards. If you had friends, you were loyal to
your friends. And I think that’s the way he was.
WILLIAMS: Did your family have a code of honor about not talking about the president
if reporters came around? Do you have any experience that way?
HINDE: No, no, there was . . . I mean, everybody just . . . He was still, even to
people whom he had known for a long time in Independence, he was still
just Harry Truman. And I think he thought of himself as that way, too,
because he’d go for walks uptown all the time, and stop and talk to people
and never . . . Everybody treated him pretty much as they had before and
called him Harry and . . . You know, it’s difficult to think of this as being
true, but it was true, I think.
WILLIAMS: The presidency didn’t seem to change him?
32
HINDE: No, if anything, he had an increased amount of confidence in himself, but I
think he was always confident in himself and his ability. And he was an
omnivorous reader, literally self-educated, I think. I think he graduated
from high school, but he didn’t go to college.
WILLIAMS: Did you go to his funeral?
HINDE: No, I didn’t go over. In fact, I don’t think I was in Missouri at that time. I
can’t remember now. I may have been in Pennsylvania at that time.
WILLIAMS: It was ’72.
HINDE: Seventy-two? I was here then.
WILLIAMS: Christmas time.
HINDE: No, I didn’t go.
WILLIAMS: Would your mother have gone?
HINDE: Seventy-two, my father was dead. Seventy-two, my mother was . . . she
was living there in Independence, but I don’t think she went. I can’t
remember that she said anything about it. In fact, I couldn’t remember
when it was. [chuckling] But I don’t think she went.
WILLIAMS: You’ve mentioned that you corresponded with Bess Truman about family.
Was that frequently? Would you send Christmas cards, things like that?
HINDE: No, what I corresponded with her about was how this relationship . . . What
I was trying to do was to tie my grandmother in to this line of family, and
when my Aunt Virginia sent me all the material she had, and she said in the
letter, “Bess Truman’s line since Revolutionary times is the same as
Mother’s”—Mother, meaning my grandmother, you know—and she said,
“All you need to do is to get that information from her.” So I wrote to her
and asked her for it. And she sent all this stuff but didn’t mention my great33
grandfather, which made it difficult for me to try to figure it out.
[End #4382; Begin #4383]
WILLIAMS: Is this what she sent back?
HINDE: This is what she sent back, but I clipped to it what my grandmother wrote
out for me [reading]: “Your granddad’s mother’s maiden name was Lucy
Mildred Smith.” There is a Miner Smith who is a physician in
Independence, but he’s on the Hinde side, so he wouldn’t have anything to
do with the Wallaces. And his father was James Overton Hinde, and that
man is buried on the family lot in Woodlawn Cemetery, as are my
parents—they’re not buried on the family lot, because by the time my
grandfather died the family lot was full, so he had to get a new lot. “My
mother’s maiden name was Mary Madison Willock, and my father’s name,
James Madison McIntosh.” And then her maiden name was Callie Virginia
McIntosh. That originated because my father always argued that his
mother’s name was Jennie, and my mother kept saying, “No, your mother’s
name isn’t Jennie, it’s Virginia.” And he would say, “Well, I ought to
know, she’s my mother.” [chuckling] And so I asked her one time if she’d
write this stuff out for me, and she did, and she said, “My maiden name was
Callie Virginia McIntosh.” And, of course, my youngest sister Helen is
named Helen Virginia—the name Virginia keeps coming down—and my
father’s youngest sister’s name was Virginia.
WILLIAMS: But your grandmother went by Jennie?
HINDE: Jennie. My grandfather would always say, “Now, Jennie, don’t race your
motor,” when she’d get excited over something, because he was very calm
and she tended sometimes to get a little excited. “Now, Jennie, don’t race
34
your motor.” My father always thought her name was Jennie because my
grandfather called her Jennie all the time. But the kids all called her Mrs.
Plum because she used plum switches. When they didn’t do what she said
to do, were disobedient, she’d get the plum switch, and so they all called
her Mrs. Plum. And for years I never . . . I thought she’d been married once
before and her maiden name was Plum. [chuckling] Until I finally one day
asked my father something about it and he said, “No, she wasn’t married.”
Then he explained to me why they all called her Mrs. Plum.
WILLIAMS: Is Callie a family name?
HINDE: I hadn’t heard it before in the family. Virginia is, Mary is, Howard, Tom.
Tom is a family name going clear back to England.
WILLIAMS: You said there was a John Wood Hinde?
HINDE: John . . .
WILLIAMS: The Third?
HINDE: The Third.
WILLIAMS: What happened to the John Wood Hindes?
HINDE: Well, I don’t know. I’ve got that here somewhere, but I don’t have it down
here with me.
WILLIAMS: They didn’t name any of their sons the Fourth?
HINDE: No, my cousin, Jack Hill, who lives in Independence, is named John
Howard Hill.
WILLIAMS: So that’s an aunt’s son?
HINDE: That’s Aunt Mary’s son. Yeah, Mary.
WILLIAMS: She became a Hill.
HINDE: She became a Hill, and they were related to Imina Hill, who taught English
35
in the school system for years at the junior high school. Their father owned
a hardware store that was on the corner of Lexington and Main, the
northeast corner of Lexington and Main, a good-sized hardware store.
WILLIAMS: And your father’s middle name was Campbell?
HINDE: Campbell, and he was named for a judge who was a friend of my
grandfather’s.
WILLIAMS: And your middle name is Parrish?
HINDE: Parrish, which was my maternal grandmother’s maiden name.
WILLIAMS: Everyone I interview, they have these naming patterns, the Trumans, the
Wallaces, the Willocks, I guess the Hindes.
HINDE: Yeah. I think it’s sort of a southern thing. And we were always called by
both names, too.
WILLIAMS: First and middle?
HINDE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: That just wasn’t when you were in trouble?
HINDE: Not for me. I think my brother . . . by the time my brother came along, they
just yelled “Tom!” out the door, unless they were really mad at him, and
then it would be Thomas Robert. Helen Virginia, Jeffrey’s mother, was
always Helen Virginia. And my sister was Dorothy Mae, and they always
called her Dorothy Mae. Of course, we all call . . . shortened it now, you
know. We don’t do that, but . . .
WILLIAMS: And that’s like Mary Margaret used to be.
HINDE: Mary Margaret, yeah. And with young Edgar, it was always Edgar June,
because he was Edgar Guinot, Jr.
WILLIAMS: Guinot?
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HINDE: Guinot was another friend of my grandfather’s.
WILLIAMS: G-U-I-N-O-T?
HINDE: G-U-I-N-O-T, Guinot.
WILLIAMS: Edgar G. I knew it was G, but I . . .
HINDE: Guinot. And James Overton, but that goes back into history. There were a
number of James Overtons in the Hinde line.
WILLIAMS: And so you asked your grandmother one time to explain her heritage?
HINDE: Yes. [chuckling] I just could not, I heard this all my life, but I could not
keep it straight. I didn’t know what it was, you know. And so she wrote
this out for me. It’s in her handwriting.
WILLIAMS: And what did Mrs. Truman send you?
HINDE: She sent me this.
WILLIAMS: These charts?
HINDE: These charts, which I had a very difficult time interpreting. And by the
time I wanted to contact her again, she was dead.
WILLIAMS: I think these are probably Truman Library charts.
HINDE: I think they probably are, too, yeah.
WILLIAMS: They look like the forms that they use. Well, it is confusing if you don’t
know.
HINDE: Oh, my gosh, I still have difficulty.
WILLIAMS: How you connect it all together.
HINDE: Yeah, I still have difficulty following it. That’s why I think I really ought
to go over to that Missouri Library at MU and . . . They have a heritage . . .
they have a genealogical place, and I’m sure a lot of these people must be
resident there anyway, because they all go back in history, in the history of
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the state.
WILLIAMS: Well, you mentioned that you knew Mrs. Truman’s brothers. Could you
describe them and how much you saw them?
HINDE: Mrs. Truman’s brothers?
WILLIAMS: George and Frank Wallace?
HINDE: Oh, they were more . . . Well, I’d see them, yes. One of them lived right
behind the Truman house, and the other lived right across the street from
him. My mother knew them much better than I did. I really didn’t know
them very well at all. I knew who they were, but I didn’t know them. In
fact, I think my mother and Natalie Ott were somehow related themselves,
but I never did know how that worked.
WILLIAMS: And they were close friends?
HINDE: Mother and Natalie were very good friends, yes. And I think Mother was
probably a friend of May’s, but a much closer friend of Natalie’s.
WILLIAMS: I’ve heard Natalie was rather short.
HINDE: Yeah, and, as I remember her, dark, dark hair.
WILLIAMS: But you really didn’t know too much about Frank or George, other than
they were there?
HINDE: Other than that they were there, yeah.
WILLIAMS: Did you know the youngest brother, Fred Wallace?
HINDE: No, wasn’t Fred the one that had a drinking problem?
WILLIAMS: One of the ones. [chuckling]
HINDE: Yeah. I know that there were one or two that had a severe drinking
problem, but I don’t know much more about it than that because those
things weren’t talked about in front of the children, and if you heard, you
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heard by accident. Of course, you often got little snatches of information
that made you want to find out more, but if you asked anybody about it, it
was . . . you know, you just didn’t talk about it.
WILLIAMS: Well, when I asked about Mrs. Truman’s father, he committed suicide, and
I wonder if that ever leaked out.
HINDE: No, I must tell you that I never did know that. In my entire life, I had never
heard that mentioned until I read it in Margaret’s book on Bess. And I was
stunned. I couldn’t believe it, how they had kept that away from the
children all these years, but they did.
WILLIAMS: It’s very gruesome.
HINDE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Back in ’84 I was looking and found the obituaries, and they described it
rather vividly in the Examiner, which kind of surprised me that they would
have done that.
HINDE: Yeah. I never in my life heard that even mentioned. So it’s the way it was,
it was not for children to hear, you know. Now, Margaret covers the Swope
trials. You may have read about those. My mother knew the Swopes very
well. In fact, one of the Swopes gave the original chapel up here at
Westminster. In fact, I myself—
WILLIAMS: And that’s the same Swopes?
HINDE: Yeah, the same Swopes, and I knew some of those Swopes. But of course
the Swope trial people were all before my time. But the Swope mansion
was still standing when I was a kid, and I was in that house any number of
times.
WILLIAMS: That wasn’t far from down there at Liberty and Ruby.
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HINDE: It was at the end of Pleasant Street, about where Pleasant Street crosses the
railroad tracks. And there was a huge piece of property there, and then this
great big brick house with turrets and all that. It was a typical Victorian:
very dark inside, dark woodwork, dark wallpaper, heavy plum-colored
drapes. It was just plain dark inside.
WILLIAMS: Why would you have been in there?
HINDE: I was over there with my mother, I remember, but I don’t know why.
WILLIAMS: You weren’t playing with their children?
HINDE: Well, I don’t think there were.
WILLIAMS: I don’t know if there were or not.
HINDE: I don’t think there were any Swope children at that time.
WILLIAMS: And the trials were the poisoning, alleged poisoning?
HINDE: Yeah, one of the son-in-laws was supposed to have poisoned them all.
Yeah, oh, that was talked about widely. In fact, I think that Barbara Jones
has a transcript of the full trial because her parents were involved in this,
too. Her father was a lawyer at that time. While I don’t think he was one of
the trial lawyers, I think he heard part of the testimony anyway. But he’s
got a complete transcript of the trial.
WILLIAMS: Did you know Fred’s children, David and Marian Wallace?
HINDE: No. Are they still alive?
WILLIAMS: David is. And his youngest sister.
HINDE: In Independence?
WILLIAMS: He lives in Los Angeles.
HINDE: I was going to say, I don’t remember that they . . . I can’t remember their
living in Independence, but maybe they did.
40
WILLIAMS: They lived there until 1942, and then Fred and his family moved to Denver.
But David and Margaret were, even though Margaret was nine years older
than he was, I guess were fairly close, as far as cousins go, because they did
live there together.
HINDE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: You weren’t aware of this?
HINDE: No, I didn’t know them.
WILLIAMS: [To Stone] Have I not covered something I should have? [To Hinde]
There must be more stories about your relatives that are amusing or . . .
HINDE: [chuckling] There probably are, but I can’t . . .
WILLIAMS: Climbing water towers and things. [chuckling]
HINDE: Well, I don’t know. I can’t think of anything else to tell you at the moment.
I have this note here: “Revolutionary times down to Bess, my greatgrandmother
and Bess’s grandmother were full sisters. Aunt Nannie was a
half-sister.” These notes I got from my aunt. Mary Madison Willock was
my great-grandmother, and Mary Virginia Willock, Bess Truman’s
grandmother. And that, I think, was Aunt Jennie Wallace.
WILLIAMS: So they both were Mary.
HINDE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Mary Virginia and Mary Madison.
HINDE: Yeah, confusing, too.
WILLIAMS: Bess Truman, one of her names was Virginia, also.
HINDE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: So you add another Virginia in there.
HINDE: I think when she was young she was very athletic, because I think she was a
41
great tennis player. But I don’t remember that Margaret ever did anything
in athletics. Nor did Harry, for that matter.
WILLIAMS: Well, I guess that’s about it. Thank you for letting us come by today.
HINDE: Well, I’m not sure that there’s any value to any of this. [chuckling]
END OF INTERVIEW
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