Mrs. Madge Gates Wallace: The Grand Lady of 219 North Delaware Street

Mrs. Madge Gates Wallace, circa 1890

Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum

Today, we call 219 North Delaware Street, Independence, Missouri, the Truman Home. The house was built by George Porterfield Gates and his wife, Elizabeth Emery Gates. Mr. and Mrs. Gates had several children, one of whom became the mother of an American First Lady.

Madge Gates (Margaret Elizabath) Wallace (1862-1952) was born in Port Byron, Illinois, and died in the White House, in Washington DC. As the daughter of important people in Independence, she grew up in privilege, but experienced tremendous sadness in her life. Along the way, she had four surviving children, one of whom married the 33rd President of the United States.

Rangers at Harry S Truman National Historic Site have the freedom to conduct their own research and construct their own programs. Along with this freedom comes the responsibility to ascertain the accuracy of the information we present. Quite often, opinions may differ. But we must base our talks on solid research. This document shows some of the varied sources on Mrs. Madge Wallace.

The relationship between Harry S Truman and his mother-in-law, Madge Gates Wallace, is shrouded in myth and misconceptions. Everyone likes a good story. Perhaps it is fun to imagine a man as powerful as the President submitting to the dictatorial manners of a domineering mother-in-law. This thought may ease our unconscious sense of inferiority when we compare ourselves to one qualified to lead the country; it may provide a sense of leveling that brings an almost mythological figure, the President of the United States, down to our station. Nevertheless, whatever image we present of Madge Wallace (or reason for doing so), we have to be able to support it with documented accounts. The opinion of one author in one book will not suffice. It is simply too easy to repeat the same tired old “ranger stories” about Madge Wallace based on Plain Speaking. Truman research has moved beyond the 1973 publication of this book. This is not to say Plain Speaking has no value, but the validity of the interviews has been questioned.

Let's face it: we will never know positively what Madge Wallace thought about her son-in-law. She left no record of her opinions. The best we can do is examine other peoples' opinions and allow a general impression to rise to the surface.

This, then, is a compilation of references to Madge Gates Wallace from a variety of sources -- some primary and some secondary. We present these references without opinion on our part -- readers will have to make up their own minds about Harry Truman's mother-in-law. If you currently think Mrs. Wallace was an "impossible old woman," and you still feel that way after reading the compliments Harry Truman wrote about her, fine. If you think Madge and Harry were "devoted to each other," regardless of the criticism Merle Miller has written, okay.

The reader will notice some repetition in the notations, as well as some references that might seem oblique. We’ve included everything, since versions of similar stories sometimes differ in significant ways, and any reference to Madge Gates Wallace, even tangential ones, demonstrates the pervasive role she played in the Trumans lives. Simply the fact she is mentioned shows her to have been on the author’s mind.

Jeff Wade, Park Ranger

1998

PS Keep in mind, especially in the oral histories, that people often get facts (dates, names, etc.) wrong. In some cases this misinformation is noted with a "[sic]," but in others it is not, so beware. This book is only a collection of opinions and remarks about MGW and is not meant to serve as a reference for anything else.
PPS Thanks go to Park Ranger David Schafer for suggesting this project.

NOTE: As new Truman sources appear, we will add appropriate citations to this article.

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CONTENTS

PRIMARY SOURCES
• Year of Decisions 5
• Souvenir 6
• My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House 11
• Henry P. Chiles Oral History 12
• Mary Paxton Keeley Oral History 13
• Ethel Noland Oral History 15
• Harry S. Truman (Truman) 16
• Plain Speaking 17
• Upstairs at the White House 19
• Dr. Wallace H. Graham Oral History 21
• Off the Record 22
• Letters from Father 24
• Dear Bess 34
• Margaret Truman Oral History 36
• Ardis Haukenberry Oral History 39
• Letters Home by Harry Truman 43
• Doris Miller Oral History 44
• Bess W. Truman 45
• Reathal Odum Oral History (1988) 58
• May Wallace Oral History 59
• Reathal Odum Oral History (1990) 64
• Truman in the White House 66
• Christine Wallace and David F. Wallace, Jr. Oral History 67
• Dorsy Lou Warr Oral History 92
SECONDARY SOURCES
• The Man From Missouri 94
• Harry S Truman (Gies) 97
• Conflict and Crisis 98
• Bess and Harry 99
• Tumultuous Years 104
• Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency 105
• Historic Structures Report 106
• Truman: A Centenary Remembrance 110
• The Trumans of Independence 112
• Truman (Jenkins) 119
• Truman (Miller) 121
• David McCullough Oral History 123
• Harry S. Truman: Life on the Family Farms 125
• Truman (McCullough) 126
• Choosing Truman 131
• Harry S. Truman: A Life 132
• Man of the People 135
APPENDICES
• Plain Speaking 138
• Core Collection 143
• Haberdasher Article 145
• The Book of Lists #2 147
BIBLIOGRAPHY 149

PRIMARY SOURCES

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1945: Year of Decisions Harry Truman 1955

• Self-serving, as are most memoirs, and unfortunately dry. Intended to serve as a record of an administration rather than a complete biography. Still, it is interesting that, out of two volumes, the only mentions of Mrs. Truman’s mother are those noted below.
13: HST’s evening with his family after the death of FDR
When I arrived, I found Mrs. Truman, Margaret, and Mrs. Truman’s mother, Mrs. Wallace, at the apartment of General Jeff Davis, our next-door neighbor. The Davises had had a ham and turkey dinner that evening, and they gave us something to eat.
43: The move from Connecticut Avenue to the Blair House before Mrs. Roosevelt vacated the White House
Mrs. Truman, her mother, Mrs. David W. Wallace, and Margaret were already moving out of the Connecticut Avenue apartment. Since Blair House is directly opposite the old State Department Building and little more than diagonally across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, I decided I would go and come on foot, little realizing what security precautions would be required on that short walk.
294: Letter from HST to his mother and sister, relating the chiming sequence of the White House clocks
One with a hoarse voice leads off. It is a little one which sits on my study mantel. Like most small people it has a big voice. Then comes the gold clock on the bedroom mantel. I swiped it out of the Madam’s sitting room after she left. The ship’s clock in Mrs. Wallace’s room bangs away in that crazy sailor count of bells. And then the old grandpa clock in the hall comes out with the high squeaky voice you remember -- the biggest clock with the highest pitch.
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Souvenir Margaret Truman 1956

• Often self-indulgent, yet contains many small gems of insight that make it worth reading. Keep in mind the date of publication and Margaret’s certain desire not to offend her family in any way.
11-12: MT’s early memories of life at 219 North Delaware Street
The first thing I remember about life was the hot-air register in the hallway of my Grandmother Wallace’s house in Independence, Missouri, where I was born and grew up. I must have been a little past two at the time. It was in the spring of the year -- that season of domestic chaos when the ladies of my immediate ancestry tore the house limb from limb, scrubbed, waxed, polished, painted, varnished, and enameled it and called it spring housecleaning. I had been noticing this register for some time. It had open grillwork, into which you could stick your fingers, and it obviously went somewhere that didn’t meet the eye. As my father had been born with a sense of humor, I had been born with a bump of curiosity. I wanted to know what lay behind the register.
During the housekeeping holocaust that I speak of, old Frank, the handy man, under whose feet I could often be found, was required to remove the registers, take them outdoors and burnish them with stove blacking, let them dry thoroughly, and replace them. When Frank took the register out of the hallway that day, I was lurking near. As soon as he got out of sight, I determined to investigate what I had long wanted to investigate -- where it went!
I leaned over and fell headfirst into the hot-air pipe. I didn’t get any farther than the first bend in the duct, which was just about large enough to contain my person. But I couldn’t get out. I was stuck there with my short legs waving in the air. All this came as a great surprise to me and I began to scream bloody murder. Everybody in the house came running, for terror was mixed with rage in my lamentations.
Somebody pulled me out, red in the face, choking, and besmirched with soot and lint that collects in registers. Frank was horrified.
“I told her to stay away from there,” he kept apologizing.
It was the consensus of opinion that it was nobody’s fault but my own. My grandmother didn’t think I was particularly remarkable and observed that curiosity killed a cat.
15: The source of MT’s name
I was christened Mary Margaret Truman, Mary after my Aunt Mary Jane Truman and Margaret for Grandmother Wallace.
17: Background on MGW
The Wallace side of my mother’s family came from Kentucky, like the Trumans. Grandfather David Willock Wallace was reputed to be a child prodigy. At the age of fourteen he was assistant docket clerk of the Missouri State Senate, and held a number of public offices, including county treasurer. Grandmother Wallace always said that he was the handsomest man in town. He died when my mother was a young girl and Grandmother Wallace took her and went back to 219 North Delaware to live with her widowed [sic] mother in the house Great-grandfather George Gates had built. Great-grandmother Gates was still living there when I was born and for about six months there were four generations of us under that old roof.
17-18: MGW and her children and grandchildren
Uncle Fred, who was still a young man-about-town, was especially well disposed toward me, and included me in whatever devilment he was engaged in around the house. I always thought of him as my own age, probably because Grandma Wallace called us both down with equal fervor. My father was also convinced that I could do no wrong, and I suppose I might have grown into an unbearable brat except for the strength of character exhibited by my maternal grandmother and her daughter, Bess. Both these worthies were convinced of the old adage that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. They were determined that I wasn’t going to be spoiled. Child psychology didn’t bother them! While my father was never able to bring himself to strike me, he could kill me with a sort of hurt look he has. I would have infinitely preferred a spanking to this look and I still would.
My Grandmother Wallace was a soft, gentle-looking woman, with large black eyes and heavy gray hair. She was educated at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and had a sweet voice and an air of great elegance. Although she had a whim of iron, she rarely raised that sweet voice. She must have had much to forgive me for. I was an active child and was always tearing around and around through a succession of doors in the house on my tricycle, knocking the patina off the antiques. She had grown unused to children, for it had been some time since Uncle Fred was a baby. But she forgave me everything.
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21: MGW and decorating the house
When I was a little girl the floors were dark and polished, so that I could see my face in them, and covered with oriental rugs. Grandmother Wallace loved antiques and there were many family heirlooms in the house. Her pride and joy was the fine old secretary in the living room which Great-grandfather Gates had brought out from Vermont in a wagon train.
23: MT remembers Christmas at 219 North Delaware
When I look back on those Christmases, it is like looking through the isinglass into one of those wonderful panoramas in an Easter egg. The smell of cinnamon and cedar and spruce and the waxy smell of burning candles; the thirty-pound turkey, brown and smoking from Vietta’s oven; the fruit cakes and the chocolate cakes; the preserves and pickles and creamed onions and the striped peppermint and oranges; the grandmothers and the uncles and aunts and Daddy and Mother around the groaning table; the nickel-plated tricycle under the tree and the sleepy doll that came in my stocking!
Oh, little town of Independence circa 1927, how still I see thee lie.
30: MGW’s tolerance for her granddaughter
We [Margaret and her friends] also discovered that the half shells of English walnuts, stuck with a pin for a mast and fitted for locomotion with tiny triangles of paper for sails, made boats in those arid summers. Given boats, there had to be waterways. We lacked the streams and ponds that beautify so many parts of the United States, but nothing daunted, we dug a waterway. It was a kind of canal, beginning at the drip-faucet at the side of the house and running muddily through the mint bed, tumbling with waterfalls downward through Grandmother Wallace’s lilies of the valley (which were ruthlessly uprooted), and on into the rose garden where further depredations took place. It looked, indeed, as if a bunch of moles had got on top of the ground and continued their architecture. It was quite a problem to raise flowers in that weather and at this vantage I have a better understanding of the wan looks of my grandmother when she regarded the fallen petals of her treasured Talismans.
34: Growing up with MGW
As a child I picked up all the slang I heard and had one spell of calling everybody, from Grandmother Wallace to the family dog, “Dearie.” Even Dad got bored with this.
....
But these were minor irritations and most of the time I was entirely happy. Once Mother and Dad went off on a trip to Washington with William Southern, Jr., publisher of the Independence Examiner, and “Mom” Southern, and left me with Grandmother Wallace. I was against this and as the car drove away I stood at the door bellowing, with streaming eyes. As soon as they were out of sight I turned off the tears like a spigot and forgot all about it.
47: Remembrances of 219 North Delaware
In Independence there was our happy old house on Delaware Street with the damask wallpaper and the petit point chairs; the sound of Grandmum’s soft voice, running on, and the music of Vietta, beating things and singing in the kitchen.
79: MGW treats for dinner
I took Mrs. Lingo and Jane gave a tea for us and our guests and Grandmother Wallace took us to Hogate’s, Washington’s famous fish restaurant, for a fish dinner.
83-84: News of FDR’s death
Grandmums Wallace was staying with us at the time. I was aware that after my mother had hung up the receiver, she had said something to her. But she had spoken in such a low voice and so quickly that I hadn’t heard it, and I didn’t pay much attention. I went into her room and Mother was standing there in an attitude of dejection with the tears running down her face.
111-112: MGW and MT in Independence
Mother, accompanied by my dog, Mike, left by train for Washington to meet my father on the eighth of August [1945]. I stayed behind in Independence with Grandmother Wallace.
116: The Truman family members in Washington
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Our family circle in the White House was completed by Grandmother Wallace, who lived with us most of the time we were in residence there, and Vietta, who was an invaluable help. Not many people knew that my beautiful and delicate grandmother of the large dark eyes and soft voice was there. She was in failing health and rarely appeared at official functions. She lived very quietly there and I know how she hungered for home. Vietta looked after her, as she had done for two dozen years, and when my own mother managed to salvage an hour of leisure, she usually spent it with Grandmums.
It is difficult to describe the regimen that my mother entered on at the White House. While the corps of domestic employees at the White House were excellently trained and many of them had served there through several administrations, my mother was charged with the management of the establishment and took an interest in the gardens and everything that concerned it, as she had in Independence. The domestic details of any house take up a lot of time, and running the White House was akin to running a hotel. Along with this were the many entertainments which accrued to her official position and the functions she had to attend. Then there were Daddy and me and Grandmother.
150: MGW disapproves of MT taking to the stage
But my Grandmother Wallace, that gentlewoman of the old school, held the stage anathema, and remained convinced that no real lady could bring herself to be associated with the sock and buskin or tainted with the smell of greasepaint, in any way, shape, form, or fashion. She was a musician herself, but she had learned music as one of the polite arts of ladyhood, like water-color painting or embroidery, and not as the crass means of earning a living. Grandmother Wallace not only disapproved of the stage; she expressed herself on the matter periodically and in no uncertain terms, long after I was in it up to my neck.
151: MT & MGW alone again in Independence
Mother went back to Washington on the twenty-eighth of June and I stayed on in Independence with Grandmums Wallace, who was eighty-four that year [1946].
161: In spite of her misgivings, MGW wishes MT luck before a concert
Grandmother Wallace had sent me an orchid, which seemed like a good omen.
173: BWT “deposits” MGW in Denver
The happy pattern of Independence repeated itself. I polished the woodwork, took a singing lesson, practiced, and gallivanted around at night with dates. Mother took Grandmother Wallace to Denver and deposited her with Uncle Fred and Aunt Chris and came back home.
190: BWT has to divide her time
The details of her tenure there [in the White House] have never been known, because she did not choose to exploit them, but she worked from morning until night. In addition she was always being required to divide what little time was left between my father and me and her own mother, no one of whom seemed able to navigate without her.
196: A Christmastime trip with MT & MGW
The next day I collected Grandmother Wallace and we entrained for the East. For the first time, we were planning to spend Christmas in the White House [1947]. I dropped Grandmums and assorted knobby bundles in Silver Spring, Maryland, and went on to Baltimore without going home.
209-210: Summer, 1948, in Independence with casual references to MGW’s health
Grandmother Wallace had been seriously ill for several weeks, and on May 28 I went to Independence. She was slightly improved when I arrived, but not really well. I immediately fell to work polishing the silver. You know how a house deteriorates when the family is away. I looked around speculatively at the kitchen walls and made up my mind to paint the kitchen and pantry. Washington and New York fell away and I decided to plant a garden. I am not noted as an agriculturist but it looked simple and Grandmother wasn’t equal to bossing it this year. I went to town and bought a bunch of seeds and planted them and promptly a covey of fat robins flew down and ate them up. I was furious, but nothing daunted I went and bought some more seeds and enlisted the aid of Menefee, the yardman, who got them deep enough in the ground to be safe from the birds.
Time demonstrated this was one of the worst gardens ever produced by anybody. Part of the problem was that I didn’t know enough about horticulture even to buy seeds. I wanted some zinnias, but I bought the giant variety, which ran to treelike foliage and no flowers. The nasturtiums came up with holes already in the leaves. I
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don’t know how the bugs managed to get at them before they came up, but I reared the only nasturtiums I ever saw that came out of the ground already perforated.
Right after I got home I wrote in my diary:
June 1, 1948
Grandmums is off on another tangent about my so-called career. She opposes it. I must go on with it -- not that I care particularly!
I felt that I had come to a crossroads as far as my music was concerned -- that I had to set out on a different course or give it up. It was too late to give it up. I had not been altogether satisfied with my showing on the concert stage and I had been given a lot of bludgeoning advice by critics and well-wishers. The whole thing had got in my hair and I didn’t know what to do about it. I think these problems accounted for my depressed outlook and also my zeal at housekeeping, which was much more marked than usual. I even played cards that month, and I don’t much like cards.
I suppose my whole flutterby season had been tinctured with these reservations about my career -- that I was racing madly around and indulging myself in every pleasure that offered to keep my mind off more pressing matters. Now I was in the house on Delaware Street and I had plenty of time to think. All the glitter and glamour were far away. It was hot and dry. Grandmother was ailing. I was plain Mary Margaret. It was a good thing I had time to think for a few days, because I didn’t have time again that year.
217: More health problems for MGW
As soon as I got back to Missouri [1948] I shucked out of my city clothes and donned my blue jeans and old torn shirt and started in to paint the kitchen and pantry. I painted all the china closets apple green and gave everything several coats. It was a much bigger job than I had anticipated and seemed to go on all summer. I watered my garden, which looked very measly. Grandmother Wallace had had another bad attack and we were all worried about her.
218-219: More on MGW’s whereabouts during the summer of 1948
I watered my garden, gave Grandmother a permanent wave and went to a card party with Bob Kirby. I can’t play bridge, but nobody caught on because I had such terrible cards that nobody could play them. I really despise cards. I painted the kitchen -- second coat -- had my hair cut off short and everybody complained. I bought some clothes and saw Mother and Grandmums off to Denver. I stayed with the aunts in Independence while Mother was away and it was very difficult to diet. On September 4 I left for Washington.
243: The day after the 1948 election
We left home at eight o’clock the next morning -- Dad, Mother, Grandmother Wallace, Vietta, and I. The Snyders joined us in St. Louis.
247: More health problems
On December 3 Dad and I went to the Father-Daughter Dinner given by the Washington Press Club. Grandmother Wallace was quite ill at the time and Uncle Fred had come on to be with her. I was worried about her, but I couldn’t give in to it.
249: Even more health problems
Christmas was quiet that year, due partially to the frail health of Grandmother Wallace. It was a family time, though, and I always liked that. I saw Aunt Mary and Uncle Vivian and Aunt Luella and all the Wallace clan.
327-328: Diary entries by MT about the death of MGW
Monday, December 1, 1952
Grandmother has had another parietal stroke. She doesn’t answer or eat. Mrs. Eisenhower came to talk over housekeeping details with Mother today.
Thursday, December 4, 1952
I came down to Washington for the big Cabinet dinner tonight. Governor Stevenson is staying here. He and I went down together. He read me a letter which was sent to him to give me. I must say I liked the reading better than the content. He is most charming and lots of fun but is so smart he scares me somewhat. Grandmother still in a coma.
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Grandmother Wallace died on December 5 at 12:37 PM. I was on the train en route to New York. When I got off at Pennsylvania Station, I was handed a message which read: “Fernlake’s mother died today at 12:37. She requests that her daughter be told.” Fernlake had been the code name for Mother during the war. I don’t know why they used it that day except that my mother’s sense of privacy was always at work.
I never left the station. I got on a train headed for Washington and went home to do what I could for my mother.
The next day Vietta and I went to the Hines Funeral Home to put on Grandmum’s favorite earrings. She looked the way she had when I was a little girl -- not a trace of her long illness. It was very hard for me to take -- giving her up. She had called me her Sugar Lump and she had been a part of my life every day I could remember.
In the last forty-eight hours, I had witnessed the end of two eras. The Cabinet had ended a government era with the dinner I had attended, and Grandmum’s death ended an era in my own life. On the eighth of December we took Grandmother back to Independence, and then came back to Washington. Christmas was rather sad that year. All the relatives came but it was impossible not to feel gloomy. Just before Christmas we had a welcome visit from Premier Menzies of Australia, who came to the White House with his daughter for tea. We had Christmas dinner in the State Dining Room for the last time.
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My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House Lillian Rogers Parks 1961

• A rare look at the Trumans’ private lives by a person with no particular reason to put them in the best light, other than what appears to be obvious affection for the family. That reason alone makes one suspect there is more Mrs. Parks observed than she is telling.
89-90: The White House staff would shield MGW from stressful news
The main pets for Margaret were a pair of “loudmouth” canaries, who never quit singing. Margaret loved to listen to them, but their main purpose was to provide company for her grandmother, Mrs. David Wallace, who was in poor health. When Mrs. Wallace died, the canaries were given to the maids Julia and Bluette.
One of my most touching memories is of Mrs. Wallace, who never knew about the attempt on her son-in-law’s life. She was living at Blair House with the Trumans, and when the shooting took place, she asked Bluette, who helped take care of her, what had happened. After she had gone to find out, Bluette choked back the tears, and reported that is was “Nothing. They’re working on the street.”
Mrs. Wallace’s sight was so bad that Bluette and Vietta, another maid, took turns reading to her, and both carefully omitted anything about the assassination attempt.
285: HST & MGW prepare for breakfast alone in the White House
And once, when Mrs. Truman was away, it was up to the President to order his breakfast. He called the pantry and said, “Breakfast for Mrs. Wallace and me.”
The voice on the other end said, “Who is me?”
The answer was, “I happen to be the President of the United States. Who are you?”
292: MGW’s reaction to the firing of MacArthur
Mrs. David Wallace, the First Lady’s mother, criticized the President when he relieved MacArthur of his command.
Why did he have to fire that public hero, Douglas MacArthur? And so soon before an election too. Why hadn’t he let the General run the Korean War his own way? Those who defended the President backstairs said that was what made him so great. He made up his own mind and “let the chips fall where they may.”
293: BWT’s reaction to MGW’s reaction to the firing of MacArthur
The First Lady never criticized her husband in public, nor did she like to hear her mother criticize the President in private. As far as she was concerned, the President could do no wrong, though he could speak out of turn.
When Mrs. Wallace persisted, and asked from her sickbed, “Bess, why did Harry fire that nice man?” Mrs. “T” refused to discuss it. Instead, she threw back her shoulders like a true Musketeer and marched out of the room.
302: MGW’s reaction to MT’s singing career
Poor Margaret had her troubles with both grandmothers. One didn’t want her to marry a Yankee, and the other, Mrs. Madge Wallace, didn’t want her to go on the stage. So she disobeyed both of them.
310: BWT sometimes introduced her mother to White House guests
On Friday night, the Princess [Elizabeth] gave a dinner for the President and Mrs. Truman at the Canadian Embassy. Before noon on Saturday, the couple was ready to leave, and Mrs. Truman brought the Princess to the Glass Room to see her mother, Mrs. Wallace.
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Henry P. Chiles Oral History 1962

• Schoolmate and lifetime friend of Harry S Truman and Bess Wallace Truman. Interviewer J. R. Fuchs.
• The remarks made by a friend during the Trumans’ lifetime. Again, the absence of remarks about Mrs. Wallace probably implies more than the interviewee intended.
90 -- Description of MGW.
You'd think she [BWT] was a tomboy, but when she was grown, she was the most gracious Southern lady you ever met, as demure as anybody can be. Her mother was a typical Southern lady and Bess was the same way.
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Mary Paxton Keeley Oral History 1966

• Childhood friend of Harry S. Truman and Bess (Wallace) Truman.
• Often referred to by later biographers, Mrs. Keeley’s interview is required reading for the Truman story. A next-door neighbor of BWT during their younger years, Mrs. Keeley was in a position to know a great deal about Bess’s early days. One gets the impression Mrs. Keeley would not choose to criticize the Truman family under any circumstances. Not analytical, but provides insight into the social climate of Independence at the turn of the century.
24 -- The young Madge Wallace.
KEELEY: Madge, Mrs. Wallace, ran off and married. And her father was mad at her for a while. I don't know the circumstances.
FUCHS: This was Madge Gates?
KEELEY: Yes. Her father was one of the rich men in the town. And he had these three daughters, Madge, Myra and Maude and two or three sons.
38 -- An aside in a discussion of George Gates.
KEELEY: After Mr. Wallace died, Mrs. Wallace went to Colorado to live. I was very fond of her; she was a wonderful woman. She watched over her sons. As long as they lived at home she never went to bed until the last one was in.
41-42 -- David Wallace's suicide.
KEELEY: He [Keeley's father] said, "Go over and see Bess." And Bess was walking up and down back of the house with clenched hands, I remember. She wasn't crying. There wasn't anything I could say, but I just walked up and down with her. I don't remember his funeral. Then Mrs. Wallace told me later that she felt so humiliated. I don't know what else there was, really, whether it was debts, or whether it was -- I don't know what it was.
FUCHS: You don't know why he did it?
KEELEY: No, I imagine my father knew, buy my father did not gossip. He was brought up in a household of very spiteful women and he made a rule never to have gossip in our house. So we weren't told anything.
They only stayed a year in Colorado Springs so Mrs. Wallace told me much later. Then they came back and Bess went into Barstow's to school.
FUCHS: She went to Colorado Springs for a year?
KEELEY: Yes, I think it was a year. Mrs. Wallace felt humiliated by whatever it was. I used to go up to see Mrs. Wallace on every birthday when Harry was in the White House. And when I was there I always went to see them at Christmas.
44 -- The courtship of HST and BWT.
KEELEY: But Mrs. Wallace wouldn't agree to her marrying Harry. Mrs. Wallace was a matriarch. Mrs. Wallace felt she couldn't get along without Bess. That's the reason why Bess didn't go away to school. But she went into Kansas City to Barstow for a year, as a day student, I think and so ...
46 -- The girls' basketball team.
KEELEY: But my father and Mrs. Wallace didn't think it was ladylike. They wouldn't watch it, so I think they finally must have broken it up, or I went away to school, probably.
50-51 -- Domestic help.
FUCHS: Did the David Wallaces have servants?
KEELEY: Oh, everybody had a cook. A cook didn't cost much money. Those cooks had a custom of taking all the left-overs home. They went home after the midday meal, and came back to get the supper. They always worked on Sunday because we had a better dinner. But they took home the remains. My mother, who was brought up on a farm in Boone County by a mother who often said, "Waste not, want not," complained of this custom and my father
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said, "Now Mary, food is cheap and not everybody will work in a family of five lively children, and old Annie is a good old woman and we mustn't say anything to her." But I don't remember the Wallace cook or cooks. My sister probably could remember her. Many ladies went in and made their own cakes. If they wanted to have a dinner party, a very stylish one -- I saw in St. Louis these molds -- they'd get ice cream from Morton's in Kansas City. They had molds of all kinds of flowers, and fruits and things. My family were more readers, I'd say than entertainers, but they did have dinner parties. We had books from top to bottom of the house but I think the Wallaces had a very gay social crowd and it was old fashioned whist that they played. But my mother didn't play it. But Mrs. Wallace had beautiful clothes, I remember; she was a beautiful woman. She had dark eyes, dark hair, and I think she was the prettiest of the three sisters; Madge, Myra and Maude, and on the Queen of the Pantry flour sack you will see a composite picture today, I think -- the last sack I got had it -- it's a beaded curtain with a palm and here's a beautiful young lady with a bustle.
FUCHS: You think that's a composite picture of the three daughters?
KEELEY: Oh, yes, or maybe it's one of Mrs. Wallace, I don't know. When Mrs. Wallace came back from Colorado, she went to live with her mother and father, I think he'd retired. I think they left her that home [sic], because she looked after them until they died there.
16

Ethel Noland Oral History 1966

• First cousin of Harry S Truman. Interviewer James R. Fuchs.
• Anomalous remarks outstandingly at odds with virtually everything else written about MGW.
103-105 -- Relationship between HST and MGW.
NOLAND: There's one myth that I would like to nail. And that is that Mrs. Wallace didn't approve of the match. Had you ever heard that?
FUCHS: Yes, I'm aware of that.
NOLAND: Oh, it couldn't be more erroneous. It just couldn't be. She liked him; she always liked him, and she favored the match from the very start. In fact, we weren't sure whether she liked him better than Bess did or not. But she approved of him, because she knew that he had qualities that any girl could bank on in the long run.
FUCHS: You really don't think that he bought the car then to make a bigger impression on the family, more than he did for the transportation, which is one ...
NOLAND: No, it was a matter of transportation. Because making an impression never seemed to dawn on him very much. He wasn't a person to put up a good front, you might say. He was a person -- "If you like me now, you like me, and here I am, and this is the way I am. You either take me this way or you don't." In fact, the whole family was that way. His mother was that way. She never tried to impress people; which is a sort of a sincerity and genuineness that -- I think we need more of.
FUCHS: We certainly do. One writer made the point that perhaps, as I recall it, the acquisition of an automobile had helped swing Mrs. Wallace around to his side.
NOLAND: Not at all. He didn't need to do that, but he did need to get back and forth from Grandview.
188-120 -- Comparing the Wallaces and the Trumans.
FUCHS: Then, after they came back from the honeymoon, did they immediately live in this home here or was there another apartment or home in between?
NOLAND: No, they lived right here at 219 N. Delaware. Bess thought they should stay until her mother got used to the idea. Bess was very devoted to her mother. Oh, very! And, of course, Mrs. Wallace was a wonderful mother, a very devoted mother. So, mother never got quite settled enough for Bess to leave. And they liked it that way, and Harry liked it that way. He was devoted to Mrs. Wallace, too; and she to him, which belies that tale that she didn't like him. She wouldn't have wanted that arrangement I think, or he wouldn't. But they were always very congenial, that is, Mrs. Wallace and Harry.
FUCHS: Well, of course, part of this was, because some writers have assumed that there was a great difference in the, well, you might say, fortunes of the Wallaces as against the Trumans, and that they felt some class distinction.
NOLAND: Well, they imagined a greater difference than there was; because while the Trumans, as we said, were very unassuming and never tried to impress people, there was always a feeling of security there. There was never any feeling of being bankrupt or poverty stricken.
17

Harry S. Truman Margaret Truman 1972

• Written by a daughter during her parents lifetime. Should be taken, not as deep insight into the personality of MGW, but as an indication of how pervasive her presence was in the Trumans’ lives.
137: The family takes MGW to Washington
Our transfer to Washington caused a minor crisis in my own life. Early in 1940 I had decided to change from piano to vocal training and had begun taking singing lessons from Mrs. Thomas J. Strickler in Kansas City. A permanent move to Washington meant that I could only see Mrs. Stickler at random intervals, when we went home to Independence for holidays or during the summer months. But my mother and father decided it was more important for me to spend a full, uninterrupted year at Gunston Hall and get a diploma from that school. So we moved from Independence to Washington, taking Grandmother Wallace with us. We rented another apartment on Connecticut Avenue, and settled down to life as year-round political -- that’s the poor kind -- capitalists.
210: Brief remark on MGW’s reaction to the death of FDR
Suddenly Mother was standing in the door of my bedroom with tears streaming down her face. My Grandmother Wallace, who shared the bedroom with me, gasped, when Mother, in a choked voice, told us that President Roosevelt was dead.
554: MGW’s death
The following day [December 5, 1952] Grandmother Wallace died at 12:37 p.m. She had been ill for several weeks, and had been in a coma for the last few days of her life. It was a little awesome, to think of the way the world had changed in the ninety years she had lived. It redoubled my feelings of things coming to a close, of history changing direction.
18

Plain Speaking Merle Miller 1973

• Difficult to classify as either a primary or a secondary source. Purportedly a primary source with a great deal of editorial commentary by the author. Greatly discounted since publication; see Appendix I. More of a caricature of Truman than anything else. Note also that most references to MGW come from either the author (with no documentation whatsoever), or from a handful of select people. The interesting interviewee is Ardis Haukenberry (see her oral history as well).
17: Editor’s remarks concerning MGW’s thoughts about HST
He and Bess had put up with mother-in-law Wallace from the time of their marriage in 1919 until her death in 1952. They had fed her and clothed her and housed her, including in her last years a room of her very own in the White House. But Madge Gates Wallace never stopped ruminating, aloud and whenever possible in the presence of her son-in-law, about all the people who would have made better Presidents than Harry. And why did he have to fire that nice General MacArthur? The general was a man she could have felt socially at ease with; for one thing, he was a gentleman to the manor born. He was a five-star general, not like some dirt farmers who shall remain nameless. And don’t track up the kitchen with your muddy feet, Harry.
When she died, that impossible old woman, she didn’t even leave the house to Harry. She left it [sic] to Bess and the Wallace boys, and Harry had to buy out their share.
But, as it says in these pages, in all those years, Harry never once complained. He never once answered back. Mrs. W. L. C. Palmer, who taught him Latin and mathematics, says, “You must remember Harry is a reticent man.”
103-107: Editor’s remarks concerning MGW’s personality
The house was built in 1867 by Bess Truman’s grandfather, General [?] Porterfield Gates, who made a fortune milling Queen of the Pantry flour, which in my youth was still popular throughout the Middle West.
The Gates family may not have been the richest family in Independence, but they were by far the fanciest, and Madge Gates Wallace, Bess’ mother, certainly fancied herself the grandest lady in town. David W. Wallace, Bess’ father, was not, in the language of Independence, nearly as “well fixed” as the Gateses. He was a handsome man with long sideburns, a mustache that drooped over his wide mouth, and a charming manner that everybody in Independence remembered with affection.
But he was never quite able to make a living for his four children and his imperial wife, and again in the language of Independence, he “took to drink.” And in 1908 [sic] he seated himself in a bathtub and shot himself in the head with a pistol.
After his death, Madge Gates Wallace, perhaps understandably, became not less imperious; she became more so. She was called “the queenliest woman Independence ever produced.” I always felt that when Harry Truman talked, as he often did, never with affection, about “the high hats and the counterfeits” of Independence, he had the Gateses and the Wallaces in mind.
He had known Bess since they met at Sunday school in the First Presbyterian Church in 1890, but they were not married until twenty-nine years later. That may not have been the longest courtship in history, but it is certainly in the running.
Janey Chiles, a retired Independence schoolteacher: “I thought that they never would get married. I think Bess wanted to, although I’m not sure, but Mrs. Wallace.... Nobody was ever good enough for her, or so it seemed. She was a very, very difficult person, and there wasn’t anybody in town she didn’t look down on. And Harry Truman was not at that time I believe a very promising prospect.”
[Miller’s remarks] Harry Truman was thirty-five years old; his only experience up to that time had been as a bank clerk, a farmer, and a soldier, and now he was proposing to go into the haberdashery business with, of all things, a Jew named Eddie Jacobson.
Bluma Jacobson: “Eddie and I were never at the Truman house. We went maybe two or three times on picnics and on the Fourth of July, but the Trumans never had us at their home. The Wallaces were aristocracy in these parts, and under the circumstances the Trumans couldn’t afford to have Jews at their house.”
Susan Chiles, another retired schoolteacher: “The Gateses, the whole Gates family, were all topnotchers here. If there was anybody in town that was high society, it was the Gates family.”
....
19
[Miller’s remarks] After their marriage and a brief honeymoon in Chicago and Detroit, Harry and Bess moved into the house on North Delaware Street with Mrs. Wallace, and the three of them lived together until her death in December, 1952. She was ninety years old, and in the thirty-two [sic] years between the marriage and Mrs. Wallace’s death they lived not only in Independence but in Washington, DC. At the time Harry Truman became President, she was sharing a bedroom with Margaret in the apartment on Connecticut Avenue, after which came Blair House and the White House.
But in all that time, I was told, she never quite reconciled herself to the marriage. In Mrs. Wallace’s mind Bess had clearly married beneath herself. The Trumans were dirt farmers, and Mrs. Wallace said so, frequently in the presence of her son-in-law.
Henry Chiles: “I don’t think Harry ever really liked Independence. Well, he liked it all right, I guess, but Grandview was always more like home to him, and Independence has always been more what you might call a Wallace town, and Mrs. Wallace never let him forget that for a minute.”
Susan Chiles: “I probably shouldn’t say this, but there just didn’t seem to be any way in the world to get along with Mrs. Wallace. Bess put up with her, though, stuck with her through thick and thin, although I understand that even in the White House there was just not any way of satisfying her.
“But Harry was always as nice as he could be to her. It was just a most remarkable thing, and I think people around here respect him as much for that as anything else.”
[Miller’s remarks] No matter what his job was, Harry Truman always took home a briefcase full of work, but the house on North Delaware never seemed to be quiet. Floors were forever being waxed, curtains hung, ceilings painted, and walls papered, particularly it seemed in exactly the places where Harry Truman was trying to concentrate. There were also Madge Gates Wallace’s guests, frequently her sons and their wives, who also never seemed completely content with Bess’ husband.
As I’ve said, even while she was living at the White House, Mrs. Wallace seldom failed to make it clear that Harry Truman was not what she had in mind as a son-in-law. Or as a President. As late as 1948 she was often heard to remark that she could not for the life of her understand why Harry was running against that nice man, Thomas E. Dewey.
“And in all those years,” said Mrs. W. L. C. Palmer, “Harry Truman never once answered back. Never once. You must remember Harry is a reticent man.”
....
I [Miller] said, “And I wonder if you’d mind saying whatever you might normally say to the President and let us record that.” And I added, “We really ought to record it for posterity’s sake.”
Mrs. Truman gave me a look that Madge Gates Wallace might have envied, and she said, “I have no desire to have my voice recorded for posterity.”
20
Upstairs at the White House J. B. West 1973
• Another insider’s view of the first family in the White House. Interesting impressions of the appearance of MGW, but lacking in intimate detail.
61: MGW was provided with a room in the White House
Mrs. David W. Wallace, Mrs. Truman’s aging mother, would move into the guest room in front, over the north portico. Miss Reathal Odum, Mrs. Truman’s secretary, could sleep across the hall and double as a companion to Mrs. Wallace.
**74: The staff’s view of MGW in the White House
She [BWT] usually joined the President for lunch, or, if he had other plans, she ate lunch alone with her mother in Mrs. Wallace’s room.
Mrs. Truman’s mother, Margaret Gates Wallace, was as close to an aristocrat as the Midwest could produce, as formal a lady as ever lived in the White House. She called her son-in-law “Mr. Truman,” even though he’d been in her family for twenty-six years by this time, and she delicately opposed a career for her granddaughter, Margaret. In the White House, where she lived for the rest of her life, she hardly ever left her room. Bess Truman visited her mother faithfully every day, and as Mrs. Wallace grew older, read the newspapers to her.
81: BWT & MGW return to Independence
When Mrs. Truman and Margaret left for Mrs. Wallace’s home in Independence, Missouri, at the beginning of June, the White House began to steam from the summer heat. The housekeeper, Mrs. Nesbitt, heaved a sigh of relief that her eagle-eyed boss was away.
82: The housekeeping and food service of the White House did not meet with BWT’s approval
However, the White House kitchen was not exactly a gourmet’s dream in those days, either, according to the Trumans. So when Margaret, her mother, and Mrs. Wallace, accompanied by Mrs. Wallace’s long-time cook, Vietta Garr, escaped to Missouri for the summer, Mr. Crim and I had numerous conferences on how to handle the housekeeping.
116: The Blair House scene before the assassination attempt
The President went upstairs for a few moments, then came down to lunch with Mrs. Truman and Mrs. Wallace. Things were quiet, sleepy, back to normal after the previous day’s entertainment.
125: MGW’s death and after
The next day, at noon, Mrs. Truman stood in the Red Room receiving a group of ladies. As soon as they left, she hurried back upstairs. Her mother had suffered a mild stroke on December 1, and Mrs. Truman had scarcely left her bedside since.
At about 12:45, the President called me to his oval study. He and Mrs. Truman were seated side by side on the green damask couch.
“Mrs. Wallace has just passed away,” he said.
Mrs. Truman was composed, sitting quietly beside the President while he talked.
“We’d like to make arrangements to go to Independence, but without any notice. Mrs. Truman would like it to be as private as possible. Would it be possible that we could travel in a regularly scheduled train, just go in a regular drawing room?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I answered.
But the Secret Service would not allow it. The President of the United States cannot travel around like a private citizen, no matter how deeply he may wish it.
So they had to use the Presidential car, on the end of a regular train, to go to Independence for the funeral. The press, for once, respected Bess Truman’s wish for privacy.
They came back to the White House for Christmas, for dinner with the family in the State Dining Room. But Mrs. Truman was sad, both at losing her mother and, I suspected, at leaving the White House.
329: MGW smells a rat
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Once, during the Trumans, Reathal Odum called me out to the South Portico, where she and Mrs. Wallace were eating dinner. We watched, fascinated, while a large, brown rat walked up the steps, across the portico and down the steps on the other side, before I called the gardener to chase it away.
22

Dr. Wallace H. Graham Oral History 1976

• Personal physician to President Harry S. Truman, 1945-72.
• Typical closed-mouthed interviewee. There must be a great deal Dr. Graham chose not to tell. Whether the information would be critical or complementary will never be known.
31-32 -- Small comment on the health of MGW.
GRAHAM: Mrs. Truman was also very kind at all times, very obliging. Her mother was there for a while and she wasn't feeling too well either, and I took care of Mrs. Wallace, Mrs. Truman, and the President, and that was about it.
23

Off the Record Robert Ferrell 1980

• Primary source with editor’s secondary commentary. Little insightful information, other than Mr. Truman’s references to the virtually constant presence of MGW in his life. By the time MGW died, Mr. Truman was surely writing for an expected later audience, so his diary remarks should be considered in light of this.
72-73 -- Editorial remarks by Ferrell.
After high school [Harry Truman] went to Kansas City to work in a bank, and upon the death of her father, Bess and her mother moved to her grandmother's house at 219 North Delaware. The Truman-Wallace courtship lapsed. Meanwhile the Nolands had moved to 216 North Delaware, an old-fashioned little Victorian house, virtually across the street from Bess. After four years in Kansas City, Harry went back to the farm near Grandview. One day he visited his aunt and cousins and learned that Mrs. Wallace, Bess's mother, had sent over a cake and the plate needed to be returned. According to daughter Margaret, Harry snatched up the plate with something approaching the speed of light and took it across the street. Bess answered the door, and the courtship was on again.
116 -- HST letter to Mary Jane Truman, August 6, 1947
Bess arrived on time Monday morning. I met her at Silver Spring. She said her mother came to Indp. from Colorado the day before on a plane and had announced that she is now air minded.
128 -- HST letter to Mary Jane Truman, March 30, 1948
I went to a press party at 6:30 last night, came home and had dinner with Bess, Mrs. Wallace, Mary Bostian (Salisbury) and Roslyn Allen -- Pete's daughter.
180 -- HST letter to Bess Truman, June 11, 1950
Lots of love. I miss you -- but you must take care of your mother.
191 -- HST letter to Ethel Noland, September 13, 1950
Bess told me last night that Mrs. Wallace is in a bad way. No one seems to be able to take all the blows but your cousin HST. I've spent my life trying to have all the family get along and love each other.
242-243 -- Diary entry, March 2, 1952
The doctor says that my mother-in-law is very sick. Yesterday I called the wife of Mrs. Truman's oldest brother, Frank Wallace. Bess had called earlier in the day. Frank had decided to come on to DC, so had George, the second son.
After I called Natalie, Frank and George called Fred in Albuquerque. He managed to board the same plane which picked up Frank and George in Kansas City.
I met them at the Washington Air Port at 1:30 Sat. March 1, 1952. They were a solemn trio -- so was I. But their mother has survived. She improved noticeably when the three sons arrived at Blair House.
....
We came back to the Blair House after the inspection [of the remodeled White House], Bess, Frank, George and Fred, children of my mother-in-law. She was very ill.
244 -- HST letter to Ethel Noland, March 3, 1952
Hope Nellie is well and all is well with you. Mrs. Wallace is very sick. I wired the boys to come, but she is better today.
244 -- Diary entry, March 4, 1952
[Margaret's] three uncles, her mother's brothers, were here over the week end and they went home last night, at their mother's direction. That is what they should have done. Everything possible is being done. I hope that the mother can survive to return to the White House and then for the return to Independence. I have been through the present situation twice in my life and it is heartrending.
249 -- HST letter to Ethel Noland, May 11, 1952
Of course I can't be there, much to my regret. Bess went down town for a wedding present. I've not seen it yet but you know Miss Lizzie knows how to do those things. You know what would happen if I came? The wedding would be so submerged in the visit of the Presidente that the young people wouldn't know they'd had a
24
wedding. First, advance secret service men would "case the joint" -- house or church, wherever it takes place. They have to have the guest list and be sure no one of them had a knife, a gun or a bomb. They'd be stationed at every corner of the house or church and the whole town police force would be on duty and as jittery as if the Russian Army were coming. So you can see it would spoil the event. Bess must stay with her mother and Margie has a TV show or something in New York. Ain't it hell to have a head of the State in the family.
275-276 -- Diary entry, November, 24, 1952, 5:00 A.M.
Bess's mother is dying across the hallway. She was 90 years old August 4th. Vivian's mother-in-law passed on Saturday at eleven thirty. She also was ninety just a month after or before Mrs. Wallace. When you are sixty-eight death watches come often.
....
Since last September Mother Wallace has been dying -- even before that, but we've kept doctors and nurses with her day and night and have kept her alive. We had hoped -- and still hope -- she'll survive until Christmas. Our last as President.
277 -- Diary entry, November 28, 1952
Margie came down from NY Wednesday morning. She was to come on Thursday -- Thanksgiving Day. I'm sure she was uneasy about her grandmother and her mother -- so she came a day sooner.
....
We have dinner in the family dining room. My good old mother-in-law is very, very sick. We've had nurses and doctors with her day and night for almost a year. She has had the best of treatment, I'm happy to say ...
279 -- Diary entry, December 6, 1952
Yesterday at 12:30 my mother-in-law passed away. She was a grand lady. When I hear these mother-in-law jokes I don't laugh. They are not funny to me, because I've had a good one. So has my brother. My mother was a good mother-in-law to Vivian's and my wife. It gives me a pain in the neck to read the awful jokes that the so-called humorists crack about mother-in-laws.
Today we go to Missouri to bury her. Four years ago, 1946 (sic), I was on the same errand for my mother. The sabotage press -- Bertie & Willie -- made it appear that I was wasting public money to be decent to my mother. May God forgive them, I can't and won't.
The same lice will do the same publicity job when I take Mrs. Wallace, Bess and Margaret home to bury the mother-in-law.
To hell with them. When history is written they will be the sons of bitches -- not I.
25

**Letters From Father Margaret Truman 1981

• The first document presented here that takes a step towards a dispassionate recording of a family member’s recollections. Margaret Truman begins her combining of an intimate’s memories and an outsider’s analysis that she brought to fruition in Bess W. Truman. Of special interest are the letters from MGW, and the referrals to his mother-in-law in the closing remarks of virtually all Mr. Truman’s letters. Especially note the letter from MGW to HST. The letters are arranged in chronological order.
219-220 -- Introduction to chapter about MGW.
Finally, also included in this collection of family correspondence are miscellaneous letters from little-known members of our family (mostly from Aunt Mary and Grandmother Wallace) which will round out the portrait of our close-knit family.
When I was young, and living in Independence, almost all of my immediate relatives lived nearby: Uncle Frank Wallace, Aunt Natalie, Uncle George Wallace and Aunt May were all just a stone's throw from our house. My mother's youngest brother, Fred, was unmarried then and still lived in our home. My Uncle Vivian Truman, Aunt Louella, and their family lived on a nearby farm, and my Aunt Mary Truman, along with Grandmother Martha Ellen Truman, lived a few miles away in Grandview, Missouri.
The Wallace side of the family (Mother's) which originally came from Kentucky, produced the only other politician in the immediate family. My grandfather, David Willock Wallace, was Assistant Docket Clerk of the Missouri State Senate by the age of fourteen, and later held a number of other public offices, including that of County Treasurer.
He died when my mother was young, and his widow, Grandmother Wallace (Mrs. David Willock Wallace) brought her daughter (Bess) and her three sons up in Independence in the same house which my great-grandfather had built. Mother was raised and still lives in this same house where I was later to be brought up, the house on North Delaware Street in Independence, Missouri.
Grandmother Wallace lived in that house until her death, and we had the type of loose relationship that children often have when they're brought up in the same homes with their grandmothers.
Grandmother and I also shared the same love of music, for she had once been educated at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Unlike me, however, Grandmother despised anything to do with the stage, and she had the antiquated notion that no real lady would ever associate herself with anything so vulgar.
She had acquired her musical training solely as a polite art for a lady, and she believed that polite ladies did not display their talents in public. Even after I chose a singing career, and was already singing publicly on the stage, Grandmother would frequently let me know in no uncertain terms exactly what she thought of that!
I forgave her for this, perhaps because she had so much to forgive me for. I had been an extremely active child, and was always tearing around her (our) house on my little tricycle. It must have been difficult for her to watch a young child knocking over her precious antique possessions. Still, she kept her tongue, and I tried to do the same when she expressed her outdated opinions.
My father, however, was not quite as tolerant of his opinionated mother-in-law. Perhaps he and Grandmother Wallace were never destined to get along under the same roof because she was from a town family and he from a country one. For whatever reason, while they never argued in public, there was much that they disagreed upon in private.
Still, I was very fond of her. I remember my great sense of loss and sadness on December 5, 1952 when I was handed a message as I got off a train. "Fernlake's mother [Fernlake had been the code name for my mother during the war] died today at 12:37." As Grandmother wrote in her letter, I had been her "dear lump of sugar" -- and she had been very much a part of the first twenty-eight years of my life.
222 -- Letter from MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC
January 3, 1938
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
I have two letters from you today! Both came this A.M. -- and they certainly were welcomed -- so glad you are getting "fixed up" -- and that the apartment is so nice. I wish I could see it all, the new furniture, etc.
What a fine time you are having! -- Fred will see about records -- and I will send the skates and Dad's shirts and anything else you may want. We all are fine -- Just came in after hearing Roosevelt talk -- Thought it a splendid one. Of course, you and Mother heard it. We all had a good laugh at David, the night we took down the tree --
26
When we talked about it, he said "Oh! That will be such fun" and, said it several times, while he was wrapping the ornaments (which he did beautifully -- really). So, after everything was cleaned up and the tree taken out -- he stepped over by the south window -- and looked for quite a few seconds where the tree had stood -- and said -- "I sure am mad" -- and without another word, walked out of the room. If you could have only seen the expression on his face and the way he walked out.
Tell Mother that Mrs. Woodson died this morning.
I saw Jane "New Year's" Day with Mrs. Merrifield -- going toward town.
We had such a nice day -- yesterday (Sunday) with Cousin Helen and a lovely dinner. Cousin John and Cousin Marion with little Myra Sue were there too. We were so glad we hadn't gone when you all called. It was so good to hear your voices. Both you and Mums write as often as you can. We miss you all terribly.
Lots and lots of love to all of you, Grandmother
223 -- Letter from MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC -- POSTMARKED 17 FEBRUARY 1941
Monday Morning
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
You were so sweet to send me the dear little Valentine.
I feel that I am an especially favored old lady -- with so many remembrances of the special days -- and, you never forget me.
Thank you my dear -- very much -- Is Mother very much "fluffed" up after having the Duke for a dinner partner? We are all fine this A.M. It is a wonderful morning -- just like Spring. We have the woodpeckers, robins and I heard a rain crow this morning before I got up.
I am getting so lazy -- I hate to move. My ankles are lots better -- and I feel better than I did -- but Dr. Allen keeps me on the medicine.
I wish I had something real newsy to write you dear.
It will seem such a long month until the 22nd of March. Everyone I see always asks about you and Mother.
Everyone will be glad to see you. It seems queer to see Uncle Frank walking in and out everyday. He says he doesn't mind the [?] (It may be my imagination, but I think he looks better.)
[?] just came in to dust my room, and asked me if I was writing to you -- and asked to thank you for her Valentine.
Well, I must get dressed. It is almost noon.
Keep well and happy dear.
Lots of love to all, Grandmother
224 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC -- POSTMARKED 6 MARCH 1941
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
Just a little letter this time, dear, as I am trying to get some sewing done for little ol' Marion -- Everything she has is too short -- or worn out.
I called Mrs. Grave to find out about [?]. She said Mrs. O. and Sue were still at the apt., and, until school closes, they will be there -- after that they don't know what they will do. Mrs. O. is still in the hospital in the South.
Mr. Graves has a position with the water company and they have moved to 901 N. Liberty Street.
Mrs. Ogen isn't manager at the apt. anymore.
We are all fine. We had a big snow storm last night, but the sun is shining now. Midge Peters told Uncle Frederick last night that Ann was going to Washington Sat. A.M. and they might live there. Lucy said she knows Ann could go out to see you all as soon as she arrived. Everybody is inquiring when you all will be here.
Marion was mad this morning about something -- and I called to her several times -- she didn't answer, but finally called to say -- "I am not talking."
Tell Mother, Uncle George likes his new job, he says. He is the head of the maintenance department for all the county. She (Mother) asked me in her last letter and I forgot to tell her.
Write as often as you can dear.
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Love, Grandmother
225 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC -- POSTMARKED 13 APRIL 1941
Sunday Morning
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
I am so anxious to see you all -- it seems so long since you left.
No doubt you and Mother are all "dressy up" (as you used to say, when a little tot) and going to church. C. and F. have just gone.
I think you are so very sweet to write to me -- when my letters to you have to be so prosy and uninteresting. (Please excuse all mistakes as Marion is standing here right by me -- asking question after question -- and demanding an answer to every one.)
What are you wearing at the F. M. dance? -- and when do you go? Several of the churches have sunrise services this morning.
We were so in hopes your father would be able to make a visit, while so near, hope he comes this week. Write me about the tea you attended last Sunday dear.
The schools here close in five weeks, Helen Wallace said.
Wish yours did -- so you could come home.
Lots of love dear, Grandmother
34 -- Letter HST to MT, October 1, 1941
Hope you had a good time at your luncheon-show. Kiss mamma + say hello to grandmother. Lots of love to you.
226 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC -- POSTMARKED 28 NOVEMBER 1941
Friday A.M.
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
I read and read again your good letter. Then the rest of the family had it to read. They all commented about the fine chemistry grade.
You and Mother certainly had a "full day" Thanksgiving -- didn't you? It was so fine to talk to you both. It was the first Thanksgiving you all have not been with us. We certainly missed you.
I am so glad you enjoyed the [?]. David is going back to Bryant School.
Monday
I think the child has been so unhappy at the other school -- he dreads going everyday -- and doesn't take the interest he did at Bryant.
Mrs. Allen was here a day or two ago and said Marie would be home on the 13th of December -- Harriet on the 18th. Everyone fine this A.M. and the weather fine too.
We are counting the days now. Will you drive or train? I've not a thing interesting to write you dear -- wish I had for you are so sweet to write me -- Well, I am going to wash my hair! -- so better get at it.
Take care of your dear self.
Lots of love, Grandmother
227 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC -- POSTMARKED 12 FEBRUARY 1942
Thursday Evening
28
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
I am so glad to have yours and Mother's letters this A.M. I certainly appreciate both as you and Mother are such busy people these days -- it must be hard for you to find time for a letter.
Marion is much better today -- her cold has hung on longer than the others. Margie, dear, you certainly have been (so the old darkies used to say) doing yourself proud. It does not seem to be a bit of trouble for you to stay on that honor roll.
The contest! I haven't heard that was going on. Tell me about it. I know it was not any "guessing" work. Congratulations! Dear -- which current book did you choose?
Do you like going to school in the dark? We have had so much fog in the early morning and all these schoolchildren look like little shadows going in all directions.
Well, dear, your cake is on its way -- do hope it will be good. Felitta and I got into a heated argument over it so I let her make it -- if it isn't good -- write her and tell her.
Uncle "Daw" seems to be getting along all right now.
When you find time, write him a little letter. He was so glad to have Mother's. I am always ashamed of my letters to you, dear -- for I never know of any interesting news to write to you.
I am so sorry for the Vaughans.
Do hope he gets his "leave."
Remember me to Virginia.
Write as often as you can -- dear.
Love to each one of you dear ones.
Grandmother
228 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC -- POSTMARKED 15 MARCH 1942
Sunday Morning
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
You certainly are sweet to write to me when you are so busy with your schoolwork -- and your fine grades show you work -- we are very proud of you, my dear.
I am glad you feel somewhat comfortable with your "blackouts" -- I expect you all hated to see Cal J. leave.
It was a lovely thing for your Glee Club to sing for those poor people. I know it was a little bright spot for them, in their suffering. On which program does Otero sing? I accidentally heard her once -- would like to hear her again.
I am glad you can have your chocolate while here -- for [?] makes better choc. desserts than others.
I've lost a day this week -- consequently I missed sending you or Mother a letter.
We are counting the days until the 28th and they go so slow.
We are all fine!
They are all getting ready for church (C. + F. family).
C. + F. and Aunt Nat and Uncle Frank all went to the city last night to see a basketball game -- but a very tame one Uncle Frank thought.
I want C. + F. to mail this for me, so will have to hurry. Both of you write me as often as you can.
Love to each one, Grandmother
229 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC -- POSTMARKED 19 MARCH 1942
Thursday afternoon
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
I can't tell you how much I appreciate your good letters -- especially when I have so little of interest to you, to give you in return.
29
I am hoping you can have a rest now. That you have earned such wonderful reports -- would love to see the card -- and the rest of the family will want to see it too.
Was [?] as nice as usual? I think the "blackouts" you are having must be really funny.
Have any of you seen anything of Aunt [?]
I know you and Mother enjoyed your dinner with Ben. Remember me to her.
Will she remain in Washington? So many of those offices -- are changing around -- some to be moved to K.C. Our chief subject of conversation is "when Bess and Margie come" -- do hope your father is coming too.
Tell me the names of the songs you will have at the Bazaar.
We are having patches of sunshine today, but a mean cold wind.
David has lost his first little tooth. Marion came to me and whispered it to me -- and said "Grand Mommie, he looks so funny" -- laughed and said "don't tell him."
C. is going to town so must get this ready to go.
We are counting the days now -- they seem too many -- hope the weather will be nice while you are here.
Love -- lots of it to all of you dear ones.
Grandmother
230 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC -- POSTMARKED 9 MAY 1942
Friday Noon
My dear, dear "Lump of Sugar:"
Your dear letter came yesterday and I had looked or hoped for it so long -- yet I was selfish about it for I know how busy you are all the time and, I am so proud of you dear. You deserve all the good times you have -- and I hope you will enjoy the "stars" Thursday night. Your Great-Grandmother had a sweetheart named Hitchcock and I remember so well asking her who the grand looking Army man was (while going through the album one day) and I thought it such a funny name.
I wish I could have seen you in your lovely red dress and coat.
We all want to be there for your graduation and there isn't anything I would not give if I could be -- but I am hobbling along and some days not feeling extra well -- so, I'll be here here waiting for you all to come to me.
Tell me all about what you will wear, etc., etc. and do please tell me what I can give you that you would like to have.
David is planning to go to his grandmother's in the City for the weekend -- I wish you could look in on Aunt Marg's house -- it is going to be nice. However -- sometime -- but, a mess now. Uncle Daw came home and sat down on the front steps on the porch yesterday -- looked so forlorn.
C. is going to town -- and will mail this and it's my only chance to get it to the post office.
Write me dear when you can. Will write Mother.
Love to all, Grandmother
231 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO WASHINGTON, DC
Monday, September 28, 1942
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
We are so glad to have the telegram this A.M. -- and the good news it brought -- for as you know, most of us wanted it to be as you decided, but, of course, just where you would be the happiest.
Mrs. S. and I had agreed to call the other whichever received the wire first -- so, this morning we were at the phone at the time and said "hello" together -- wasn't that strange? We both are very happy about it, dear, and hope you are -- and glad the "rush" is over so that you can take a long breath and rest.
Do hope your schoolwork will not be too strenuous, and that you will like it.
Keep well and happy dear -- you deserve all the good things that come your way.
Love to all of you dear ones, Grandmother
30
47 -- Letter HST to MT, June 25, 1943
My best to your grandmother.
52 -- Letter HST to MT, May 13, 1944
Tell grandmother hello for me and loads of love for yourself.
53 -- Letter HST to MT, September 14, 1944
Tell grandmother and Fred + Christine + the kids hello.
54 -- Letter HST to MT, July 4, 1944
Kiss your mamma for me, tell grandmother and all the family hello.
232 -- Letter MGW to MT
DENVER, COLO. TO INDEPENDENCE, MO. -- POSTMARKED 19 AUGUST 1944
Saturday Morning
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
I enjoyed your dear letter so much -- and while I was impatient for it -- I realized your time is so fully taken up with so many other things to do. We noticed in this morning's paper -- you and Mother had had sent you by the President and his daughter -- a red rose -- a very pretty compliment wasn't it?
David and Marion and Joan -- Mo's most intimate friend -- are going to a children's show this A.M. -- so all are up -- and D. had his breakfast with F. and I -- and during his conversation -- he said "Connie" said she didn't like Roosevelt -- because he ought not to have had more than two terms. David said -- I told her "it was not his fault that he had more -- it is the people -- they wanted him -- so voted for him."
I think I know of the "Toms" and "Joes" -- but who is "Ed?" He seems to be quite important too, with the "purple heart," etc.
Well, we had a good time looking at Life yesterday. The pictures! We certainly enjoyed them -- and after Frederick called to tell us, he had seen them downtown -- and C. said she couldn't wait -- and bought one -- so I have one of my own.
Ernie and Dick are having dinner with us tomorrow. Dick is being coached in his school work -- he missed so much when he had measles.
Well dishes are waiting.
Write as often as you can dear "lump of sugar."
Love -- lots of it to all of you dear ones. Grandmother
233 -- Letter MGW to MT
DENVER, COLO. TO INDEPENDENCE, MO. -- POSTMARKED 14 SEPTEMBER 1944
Wednesday
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
I was so delighted to have your dear letter letting me know about all your interesting plans for the Friday of this week -- and your plan for a visit in Columbia. Of course, I'll be thinking of you Friday -- I do that every day -- but Friday will be a special day for us both -- and I know we all will be very proud of you. My dear, as always.
Oh how I want to see your pretty sweaters, dress and coat -- and see them on you. I know how sweet you will look. Would have given anything to have heard you sing that beautiful song -- Aunt May said in her letter she received yesterday that you did it so well. Aunt May was so sweet to go to hear you, wasn't she?
What do you and Mother want for Christmas -- and, we are hoping we will have a house and that all of you will be with us. Uncle Fred and Christine are planning for that. The neighbors next door are having dinner with us tonight. They are always doing something nice for the children or sending or bringing Christine something so she and Frederick thought they should do something in return.
31
Their rock garden has been so beautiful all summer -- and she has kept us in flowers. She brought C. a jar of chili sauce and one of apple sauce yesterday. C. has just left with the children for school. Well I had better get busy -- Be sure to write all about what you are doing dear. We will be all excited and impatient for the record.
Bushels of love dear -- to all of you.
Grandmother
PS I am shy of paper -- hence the one sheet.
139 -- Letter MT to HST, September 23, 1945
Mother and Grandmother had breakfast in the drawing room (Plutocrats!) but they didn't order for Pete and me so we waded through snow drifts (between the cars) and ate breakfast in the dining car.
234 -- Letter MGW to MT
DENVER, COLO. TO ? -- POSTMARKED 1946 (DATE NOT CLEAR)
My dear "Lump of Sugar:"
The lost is found and guess where it was found -- right in the bottom of my suitcase. I've just unpacked most of my things -- but while getting it all straightened out -- getting ready to go home. -- C. + F. objected so strenuously about it. I finally put the slips and small things into the dresser drawer last night -- and found just what we had a little argument about before I left. I am thoroughly ashamed to send it unlaundered. I wore it for about 10 minutes one day and concluded I was going to burst the seams. So went right back and took it off. I am sure [?] could do a much better job at washing and ironing it. So, sending it to be done there -- our Clete isn't the best of ironers -- Natalie sent me the clipping I am sending, but no doubt it is old news to you. Will you be another bridesmaid?
We have a real March day, but warm and [?].
Write me dear. I am enclosing Aunt N.'s letter -- I too, am sick about the "Queen of the Party."
Love, Grandmother
66 -- Letter HST to MT, June 17, 1946
Kiss your ma for me and tell your Aunts, Uncles and Grandmas hello for me.
67 -- Letter HST to MT, June 29, 1946
Tell you grandmother hello and also your aunts + uncles.
171 -- Letter BWT to MT July 21, 1946
Here are some clippings for you and Grandmother.
253 -- Letter MGW to HST
D.W. WALLACE, INDEPENDENCE, MO., TO HARRY S. TRUMAN, WASHINGTON, DC -- POSTMARKED 8 SEPTEMBER 1946
Dear Harry,
I do so appreciate your kind thought and beautiful sweater -- thank you many times for it. We are looking forward to your visit here in the near future.
I hope your Bermuda trip has helped you a lot. Thanking you again.
I am most sincerely,
Madge G. Wallace
September 7, 1946
144 -- Letter MT to HST, September 11, 1946
The sweaters are so soft and fit just perfectly. You did right well by the old lady and me I'd say.
32
76 -- Letter HST to MT, September 17, 1946
Kiss your mammy, tell your two grandmas hello and also your various aunts + uncles.
173 -- Letter BWT to MT, September 26, 1946
Tell Grandmother to call Cousin Helen, about this letter + tell her I am mighty sorry I can't be there, too. Maybe Mr. D. could take grandmother in if you can't go -- you might be able to work it out someway.
278 -- Letter BWT to MT, October 9, 1946
Tell Grandmother I can't get any paper dolls of any description. If there is anything I can get in place of them let me know. Sent the shirt to her Tues. Also sent her heavy coat, etc. today by express.
...
Tell Grandmother I'll write to her soon.
80 -- Letter HST to MT, October 19, 1946
Tell grandma hello and call your country one.
186 -- Letter BWT to MT, November 19, 1946
I would suggest that a postcard to the family in Independence + Grandmother might be in order. They are a bit peeved that they have had not a word from you (or were when I heard last). And it does seem to me, too, that you might have time to send a card.
86 -- Letter HST to MT, December 21, 1946
Kiss mamy for me + tell your grandmas your aunts, uncles and cousins hello.
235 -- Letter MGW to MT
? TO ?
May 19, 1947
My precious "Lump of Sugar:"
I think you are a very wise little girl and I know it was very hard for you to decide what to do all by yourself. I am sure you feel as all of us do, it is best that you wait until you are happy again. For one cannot sing with sorrow in the heart and the first concert should be of the best.
May God be with you, my dear, and keep you in your fine work. I only wish I could see you when you are ready to go on.
With all the good wishes and my heart full of love.
Grandmother
146 -- Letter MT to HST, July 11, 1947
Mother and Grandmother are going to Denver on Monday and I am going to my two ancient aunts.
199 -- Letter BWT to MT, August 7, 1947
This note is from Cousin Aline Halsy + I thought Grandmother might like to see it --
236 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO ? -- POSTMARKED 18 AUGUST 1947
Monday Morning
My precious Margie:
Just a little note to tell you how terribly I miss you and hoping you are feeling fine! and had a good night's rest.
I've just written Mother. She called early yesterday morning to ask about your "getting off" and said she was thinking of going to Hollywood. I told her to be sure to go -- and I was delighted that she might -- do hope she does.
33
We are listening for the phone telling us you have arrived safely.
Keep well and happy.
Bushels of love, Grandmother
PS Remember me to the Stricklers and Mr. Dorsay.
237 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO BEVERLY HILL, CALIF. -- POSTMARKED 20 AUGUST 1947
Wednesday
My precious "Lump of Sugar:"
How very sweet you were to write me so soon. I had been dreading the time I would have to wait before I heard -- and it is such a dear good letter.
The radio gave us the news of your safe arrival before my or your wire came. I am anxious to hear from Mother this morning to know if she is going to Hollywood.
We are having another one of the awful hot mornings and they promised 102 today, but cooler by night.
I am thinking of you, my dear -- much of the time and hoping it is nice and cool there for you and you are feeling well and happy.
Felitta and I keep busy. Yesterday, we put new oilcloth on tables and numerous shelves.
A daily prayer goes for your success and happiness my dear.
Please remember me to Mr. and Mrs. Strickler and Mr. Dorsay.
Love, Grandmother
238 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO BEVERLY HILL, CALIF. -- POSTMARKED 24 AUGUST 1947
Sunday Morning
My precious "Lump of Sugar:"
I can't begin to tell you how proud we are of you! And wish I could give you a great big hug!
I knew the paper would tell us the wonderful things you do -- the Ovation you had, and all the grand and fine things that were said about you -- my dear.
Do hope you will enjoy the rest of your time there -- and will go to Santa Barbara and Carmel -- and other beautiful places.
Mr. and Mrs. Peters came over last evening -- and were here when we all talked to you. I told them you had talked to Ann. I'm so glad Ann and [?] could be there -- and I'm glad, too, Miss Jessie called.
Hope you are having a good long rest today -- my dear. You certainly deserve everything you like to "come your way."
Write me when you can -- Margie dear. Mother called me, this morning -- and said, they were "in the clouds" this morning! They certainly have the greatest appreciation of what you have accomplished.
Bushels of love, dear with most sincere congratulations, Grandmother
100 -- Letter HST to MT, October 10, 1947
Say hello to M [?] + George + Grandmother.
101 -- Letter HST to MT, October 13, 1947
Tell you grandma hello and all your Aunts + Uncles too.
239 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO MEMPHIS, TENN. -- POSTMARKED 12 NOVEMBER 1947
Wednesday
34
My precious "Lump of Sugar:"
You were so dear to send me these lovely pictures of your dear self. I enjoy taking them out of the envelope and looking at them, every little while. I am delighted to have them -- all mine -- and thank you dear.
And the vases too. So sweet and a kind thought to send them to me. And if I just could have heard you sing! but, I'm thinking, every day, "another day near[er]" to your coming home. All I've seen of "the Club" have raved over your singing dear and everything else about you -- I know you enjoyed seeing Aunt Nat and Aunt May. They haven't stopped yet, telling me how lovely you were -- and sweet you were, to every one.
I want this letter to go in a hurry to find you. So --
Bushels of love, Grandmums
240 -- Letter MGW to MT
INDEPENDENCE, MO. TO TULSA, OKLA. -- POSTMARKED 13 NOVEMBER 1947
Thursday
My precious "Lump of Sugar:"
I am thinking of you, my dear (which I do much of the time) -- and wishing I knew if you are feeling fine -- and getting enough rest. We treasure all the newspaper news and everyone wants the clippings.
The Little Rock concert was so nice. I liked the nice sincere compliment they gave you, my dear.
I am rejoicing that this Tulsa one is the last before you go to visit with Mother and Dada and I wish it was to be with me too, but I have to wait about ten days longer for my visit. Oh! but I'll be so glad when you come!
I'm putting on lace on three of your slips. I have here -- save me, all your mending, etc. and bring it with you.
Do take care of yourself, dear.
"The Club" said you were wonderful in everything.
Write me dear when you can.
35

Dear Bess Robert Ferrell 1983

• Primary source with editor’s secondary commentary. Wonderful oblique references to MGW’s temperament. One gets the impression of Harry Truman as an eager suitor doing his best to accommodate a skeptical potential (and later, actual) in-law.
ix: Ferrell’s remarks including a suggestion that BWT used MGW’s health as an excuse to stay in Independence
Bess bore the responsibility of caring for Mother Wallace, who suffered fragile health until her death in 1952. Bess had to spend months at a time in Independence. Moreover, she disliked Washington life, the White House not the least, and one senses that her long absences from Washington were frequently contrived.
5: Ferrell’s remarks concerning the young Madge Wallace
Madge Gates, daughter of the flour magnate, was considered the prettiest of his three daughters (Madge, Myra, and Maude) and had eloped with David Wallace. Grandfather Gates seems not to have considered this course extraordinary, and in a show of affection arranged for her likeness to appear on Waggoner-Gates flour sacks -- a girl in a bustle, bearing a fan and standing in front of a beaded curtain. She was the proud mother of Bess and, by the turn of the century, Bess’s three younger brothers.
12 & 14 [13 is a map]: Ferrell’s remarks concerning Mary Paxton’s memories of David Wallace’s death and the immediate results
She [Paxton] has no memory of what followed, including the funeral, but remembers vividly that Madge Wallace took Bess and the three young brothers to Colorado Springs for a year; they returned to move in with Grandfather and Grandmother Gates at 219 North Delaware.
Bess’s mother talked a bit to Mary about what had happened but said little other than how ashamed she had been of her husband’s suicide. She certainly needed Bess’s companionship, which she had for the next several years. For two years Bess commuted daily by streetcar to Kansas City to attend the Barstow School, a finishing school. Then she remained with her mother.
14 & 16 [15 is a map]: Ferrell’s remarks concerning another version of the cake plate incident
Harry was visiting in the year 1910, perhaps a Saturday or Sunday, and came into the Noland kitchen to hear his aunt talking about a cake that Mrs. Wallace had sent over. The cake plate needed to be returned.
128: Letter from Harry to Bess [Grandview, July 7, 1913]. MGW seems to have worried about Bess and tried to call the farm but was unable to make the connection
Tell your mother that Mary said she answered the phone last night and Central said that the girl in Independence refuses to connect her again. We have been getting most ornery service since March. I haven’t paid the bill for the last three months and I don’t think I shall. I was mighty sorry your mother got worried about us last night. You tell her that I am a very lucky person and that accidents never happen to me when I have company and am off the Blue Ridge farm.
220: Ferrell’s remarks concerning the early signs of MGW’s ill health
For Truman, the home front meant only his concern for Bess and her family (Fred Wallace was suffering through college at Columbia, Missouri; Grandfather Gates sickened and died; Mother Wallace’s health was unsteady).
307: Ferrell’s remarks concerning MGW moving in with the Trumans in Washington
When they were together in Washington they lived in a succession of small apartments that were hardly convenient: Harry and Bess in one bedroom; Margaret and Mrs. Wallace in the other. The Senator’s wife disliked the incessant socializing that went on in the nation’s capital. Even an invitation to the White House from Mrs. Roosevelt was not enough to keep Bess and her two charges, young and old, from escaping back to the comfortable, quiet house in Independence each year for months on end.
383: Letter from Harry to Bess (Washington, Jan. 1, 1936 [HST dated it 1935]) containing an enigmatic remark about Margaret, MGW and a radio
I had a most lonesome night out at the apartment all by myself. Tell Margey there is no radio and she’d better make that bargain with her grandmother.
36
442: Letter from HST to BWT (Washington, August 13, 1940) relating how his mother was forced off the Grandview farm.
Glad you went to see Mary and Mamma. The damned county court and the lovely sheriff are ordering them to move off the farm. I only hope I can catch old Montgomery, J. C. Nichols, and Roy Roberts where I can take the heart out of ‘em. Imagine your mother being forced out of 219 North Delaware. Mine had been calling that farm home since 1868. She helped her father set out those maple trees in the fall of that year.
456: Letter from HST to BWT (Washington, March 23, 1941) in which he seems to have enclosed a photograph of himself and tells an interesting joke about it
I am enclosing you your new old man. How do you like my new face? Maybe you’ll want to try my beauty shop next time. We’re afraid he’s deserted his wife or killed his mother-in-law or something somewhere else in the paper and that I’m posing for him.
456: Letter from HST to BWT (Washington, June 14, 1941). Apparently HST left home without saying the proper good-byes
I can’t get over thinking about running away without saying good-bye to Fred and your mother. The more I think of it, the worse it gets. And I never thought of it until we were at the crossroad that goes to Marshall and then I had a blue day from then on.
458: Letter from HST to BWT (Army and Navy Hospital, Hot Springs, AR, June 30, 1941). Apparently MGW has been ill again
Glad to know your mother is better and that Mamma’s eyes are all right.
489: Letter HST to BWT (The Coronado Hotel, St. Louis, MO, Sept. 26, 1942), in which he voices his intention to call MGW on the phone
I am going to call your mamma and my mamma tonight and then call you, and I hope I’ll find you all at home.
37

Margaret Truman Oral History 1983

• Granddaughter of MGW. Interviewer Ron Cockrell.
• Margaret is a self-proclaimed seeker of the lime-light. She sometimes contradicts herself in interviews, refusing to admit to errors even in the face of certain evidence contrary to her recollections. At the same time, however, she is a very loving daughter and understandably desires to present her family in the best light.
7 -- Where MGW lived at 219 North Delaware.
Mr. Cockrell: Your grandmother always occupied that first floor bedroom. Did she at anytime ever live upstairs in the master bedroom?
Mrs. Daniel: Well, that's my room up there. This was a guest room for a long time [pointing to the downstairs bedroom], and she had a room up there, and my youngest uncle was still at home across the way. My mother and father had the room that was over that room, and I had my room that is over the dining room. This was used as a guest room, but then when my grandmother got older and it was hard for her to climb the stairs, well then my mother and my uncle insisted that she move downstairs. They moved all of her furniture down here, and it in effect became her room for many years.
Mr. Cockrell: Her room that she had had before became what?
Mrs. Daniel: Became my room. I latched on the to biggest room I could find! No, actually, I didn't. I stayed in my own little room, but when I got older there wasn't anybody in it so they put me in there.
14 -- MGW as a tolerant grandmother.
Mrs. Daniel: I don't know how my Grandmother stood it, but on bad days, I was allowed to ride my tricycle in the house. My mother said she always gave her mother credit for that, that she never complained about that, because she was a very strict woman.
Mr. Cockrell: Really?
Mrs. Daniel: Oh, yes.
Mr. Cockrell: You could ride your tricycle in any room then?
Mrs. Daniel: Yes, all around here.
Mr. Cockrell: These rooms weren't carpeted then?
Mrs. Daniel: No, no. No! I wouldn't have been allowed to ride on the carpets. Wooden floors.
16 -- More on the tolerant grandmother and MTD painting the kitchen.
Mr. Cockrell: Was there any particular reason why you decided to paint the kitchen?
Mrs. Daniel: Well, it needed to be painted and this was the year after I graduated from college. I was here all summer with my grandmother. Mother and Dad weren't here. That was the summer I read Shakespeare straight through. I took his historical plays in order of history, not in the order in which the plays were written, but in the order of history, English history. I read all of his plays that summer.
Mr. Cockrell: You must have had a lot of time!
Mrs. Daniel: Well, I did! I did you know. Well, I had beaus around, but I had a lot of time. I love to read. I just decided to paint the kitchen. I just couldn't stand the way it looked. That wood has always been a kind of a brown color so I got the green and I started painting before anybody could say anything. My grandmother would never say no. She looked at it and she said, "Oh, that does look much better. Yes, I like that." When Mother got home, it was done.
26 -- MGW and children.
38
Mr. Cockrell: This was the playground of the neighborhood?
Mrs. Daniel: Yes. We had the best time. One of the best things we did that really drove my poor grandmother up the wall; I don't know how she stood it, I really don't. One grandchild she could take, but to have all these kids in the yard all the time! Of course they sat on the porch, and they got all the noise. We would ride a board down the slide which was quite a big, wooden slide, and of course we had a lovely mud puddle at the end because we put the hose at the top, and ran the hose and the wooden board down and go off into the mud. Oh, it was great fun.
28 -- Where did HST stay while MT and BWT were in Mississippi?
Mr. Cockrell: When you were ill and your mother took you to Mississippi, do you recall that?
Mrs. Daniel: Yes.
Mr. Cockrell: According to Dr. Ferrell's book, Dear Bess, your father stayed with his relatives in Grandview.
[Side one of tape one ends. The interview is interrupted, but Mrs. Daniel disputes the inference that her father lived with his relatives in Grandview during the period she and her mother were in Mississippi. She said that he lived at 219 North Delaware with his mother-in-law, Madge Gates Wallace, during this time, and that he was able to take some time off to go to Biloxi to visit them.]
Mrs. Daniel: ...whenever he could get away because you see he was a judge. But we were only down there for part of one year, just for a few months.
40 -- MGW's funeral.
Mr. Cockrell: Another bit of information concerned your grandmother, when she died in the White House. She was brought back here and was there a private ceremony here?
Mrs. Daniel: In the house, yes.
Mr. Cockrell: Was that a family tradition, to do that?
Mrs. Daniel: No, my mother didn't want any photographers or publicity around. My grandmother was laid out in that room in there.
Mr. Cockrell: That's where the casket was, in the music room?
Mrs. Daniel: Yes, and we had the Episcopal minister who came and we had the service here and then she was taken to the cemetery.
Mr. Cockrell: I have read also that your great grandparents, the Gates's, had also had their funerals in here, and some of your great-uncles had services in here, too. So this house has had a tradition of that.
Mrs. Daniel: I don't know. I don't remember any of that. They were all dead.
47 -- Vietta Garr and MGW.
Mr. Cockrell: Meals here in the house. Where were they eaten, in the dining room or in the kitchen?
Mrs. Daniel: Oh, no, in the dining room. Oh, yes, we had a cook all my life. Mother had a cook. When our old cook finally had to quit. She was with us for 40 years. She went with us to the White House, as a matter of fact, and took care of my grandmother. Vietta [Garr].
49 -- MGW sewing abilities.
Mrs. Daniel: But, yes, I was spoiled rotten by everybody, including my grandmother. She did beautiful needlework and she loved to sew and if anything went wrong with a slip -- you know you didn't throw anything away in those days like slips and underpants and stockings and those things. They were fixed. They were sewn up. I would take it straight to my grandmother. She'd fix it for me so that you would never know that it had ever been torn.
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Mr. Cockrell: That's almost a lost talent these days.
Mrs. Daniel: It is a lost talent. And another thing was that she used to fix my dresses so Mother didn't know I had torn the dress!
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Ardis Haukenberry Oral History 1983-84

• Second cousin to HST, resident of Noland Haukenberry House. Interviewer Ron Cockrell.
• Other than possibly Natalie Wallace (who unfortunately left no oral history), Mrs. Haukenberry was the most critical family member when it came to Mrs. Wallace. One cannot help but wonder if she had a personal encounter that soured her on her cousin’s mother-in-law. The reader should remember that many of Mrs. Haukenberry’s are childhood memories; she was born in 1899.
2 -- Time period in which the Wallaces moved into the Gates' house.
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Then, when Mr. Wallace died, a suicide, and Mrs. Wallace came with her brood of four. She had three boys and a girl. They lived with her parents, the Gateses.
MR. COCKRELL: Was that immediately following the death of Mr. Wallace?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Yes. Because I was here when they came up here. There was the youngest boy, Fred Wallace, and I were the same age and went to the same high school and graduated together.
2-3 -- The relationship between the Wallaces and the Gates.
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: One of the interesting stories I think about with the house is, I'm sure the porch on the south was already there when I came here. I'm not sure about that. It might have been added. Anyway, that's where Mr. and Mrs. Gates always sat.
MR. COCKRELL: On the south porch?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: On the south porch. Mrs. Wallace came with four children and they were older people. I guess the noise and disturbances and everything bothered them, and so they stayed over there. Anyway, it hasn’t been a very happy family.
MR. COCKRELL: What do you mean by "not very happy?"
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Not too congenial, I would say. They just didn't have the same interests in anything.
4 -- More on the Wallaces returning to 219 North Delaware.
MR. COCKRELL: The front of the house hasn't really changed that much, has it?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: No, it hasn't. It's the way it was when I first knew about it. Of course the Gateses were there first, then when Mrs. Wallace came with Bess and the three brothers, that was a change.
8 -- HST's authority (or lack of) at 219 North Delaware.
MR. COCKRELL: Do you know anything about the lamppost out there on the lawn?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: It hasn't been there too long.
MR. COCKRELL: Did Mr. Truman have it put up?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: He must have. He was there at the time. Whether he did or Mrs. Wallace did, I don't know. I imagine she did. [She was dead already.] I don't think he had too much authority when he was living there.
...
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: I don't think there was anybody else who stayed in the house at the time. Mrs. Wallace, if she was gone, there wouldn't have been anyone else staying there, because with Harry and Bess and Mrs. Wallace all in Washington, it would have been one of the sons and they were all three married at the time.
24-28 -- General impressions of MGW.
MR. COCKRELL: What do you remember about Madge Gates Wallace?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: [Laughter]. You really want to know?!
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MR. COCKRELL: Yes, I do!
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Well, to me, she was a rather strange person. I never did get to know her too well. Anyway, Fred was the youngest as I told you, and she always used to stand at the front door and watch him as far as she could see him every morning as he started off to school, no matter it was high school, college, whatever. She was a doting mother.
Bess was such a popular young woman. She had more beaus! Mrs. Wallace was just keen for one of them that had more money than the rest of them and more prospects than the others. For some time, we all thought she's going to prevail and he'll be it, but it didn't happen that way.
MR. COCKRELL: Do you remember the young man's name?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Well, I'm not real sure which one it was, but I think it was Matthew Paxton. There was a Bolger, too, who was pretty close. His picture was in that watermelon scene. You've seen that, there in the backyard. He was one of them. Either one of them would have been all right with her. But she didn't have her way. I've always thought it was too bad that she had to live with them in Washington because she never could accept Harry.
MR. COCKRELL: She didn't get along with him very well?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: No. No. She was just sick about the marriage.
MR. COCKRELL: Why was that? Why didn't she like Harry?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: She didn't think he was going to get anywhere, make any money. And she wanted money. She wanted her daughter to be well cared for and I think that was the stumbling block. As it happened, Harry did much better than either one of the other ones! You never can tell! Of course, none of us ever thought he would go as far as he did.
MR. COCKRELL: Do you remember that Madge Wallace was sick a lot? She had sciatica, or rheumatism. Was she ill a lot?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Not that I know of.
MR. COCKRELL: Some of the stories say that Bess and Harry came back to live across the street because Mrs. Wallace was ill.
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Well, that may be. I just don't know. I didn't know that she was so ill. I knew that she wasn't out much.
MR. COCKRELL: Did she like to stay at home?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Yes. She did go, though, to visit them in Washington several times. That's another thing, Mrs. Gates [who was dead around 10 years by the time the Trumans went to Washington] and Mrs. Wallace both always, when they came home from Washington, they brought my grandmother linen handkerchiefs. They're in a box this long and I don't know what I'll ever do with them. People don't use handkerchiefs much anymore.
MR. COCKRELL: Do you know the circumstances behind the death of Madge Wallace's husband?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: I don't think it was liquor. I just don't know. If I can make a guess, I think he found out that he was married to the wrong woman [Mrs. Haukenberry was around 4 years old at the time of the suicide].
MR. COCKRELL: He was unhappy with his wife?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Yes. She was so dictatorial, wanted here own way.
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MR. COCKRELL: Even after four children he finally realized that she was the wrong one?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Yes. He just took a gun to his head. For a long time after Harry became so prominent that was kept as a real secret. Nobody knew that until I think it was Mr. [Merle] Miller that wrote the book and dug it out.
MR. COCKRELL: What was the feeling then when it was finally revealed?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: There hasn't been anything said about it. They did try to keep it hidden.
MR. COCKRELL: How about within your family? Was it known that David Wallace had killed himself?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Not at the time, no. It was quite awhile afterwards that I knew, but they lived further down Delaware at that time. That's where Bess climbed out on the limb over the sidewalk. After Mr. Wallace's death, Mrs. Wallace came back with her four children and lived with her parents. But, they lived separately. The Gates lived on the south side of the house and sat out on that little porch there on the south. The Wallaces were on the north side.
MR. COCKRELL: Was it because of the age difference between the children and the grandparents? They didn't want to bother one another?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: They didn't want the children to bother the grandparents, yes. Playing around and yelling and so forth. Even when Fred was just a teenager, they played robbers over there and they jailed some of the guys they didn't like. Put them in jails in the basement and all of that. That would have bothered Mrs. Gates, and Mister, too, I suppose, but he was at work most of the time. I never got acquainted with him. I just thought he was a mighty nice looking man.
MR. COCKRELL: The marriage of Harry Truman and Bess Wallace in 1919, you weren't there, were you?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: No, I wasn't. I couldn't come because I was teaching in Kansas City and had only begun the year before so I couldn't get away. My aunts were there. I forgot one thing; when he was elected senator, my grandmother had a party for him in our dining room before the dining room was cut down some. Mrs. Wallace and Mrs. Gates [sic] were both present. Of course Bess was here and Harry and all of us. It was quite a party. We thought at that time, "Oh, my, he's made it to the Senate. That's wonderful!" We didn't expect him to go any farther!
MR. COCKRELL: He surprised people!
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Yes. It didn't surprise him though. He thought he was going to make it all the way.
MR. COCKRELL: Did he ever say that, when he was in the Senate that he wanted to go farther?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Oh, no. He was happy in the Senate. He liked what he was doing and he was satisfied about that. It was just circumstances which pushed him ahead. He had made a success though with little businesses. What he was looking out for were people who were scrounging and making so much off of the government. He did that so well that Roosevelt wanted him for a vice president.
MR. COCKRELL: What was the feeling in the family then?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Delighted. Delighted, but amazed, I would say. When he came home after being elected, they all went wild.
MR. COCKRELL: Do you remember that pretty well?
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MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Oh, sure. They had a parade all over town. They were worked up about it. Cars and cars.
MR. COCKRELL: When did the house across the street first begin to be a place where tourists liked to come and see? Was that when he was Senator or was it later?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: No, it was later, after he became President. And they still come, they still come. I visit with so many of them, from every state in the Union unless it's Rhode Island. Some of them get to be real friends. I had Christmas cards from six of them. One of them is a man about your age that teaches in North Dakota. I got acquainted with him about five years ago and I hear from him every Christmas.
MR. COCKRELL: That's nice!
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: He's planning to be back for the dedication of the house. I hope he gets a ticket and gets in. He'd be so disappointed if he didn't!
MR. COCKRELL: Mr. Truman's campaigns to win election, did he bring politics into his own home, or did he operate his campaigns from his home or from his office?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: I'd say it was from his office. I don't think he'd bring it into his home.
MR. COCKRELL: Was that because Madge Wallace didn't like politics?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: I don't think that made any difference. After he got to be a Senator, she thought a little bit more of him, but she never did accept him as Bess's husband.
MR. COCKRELL: Even after Margaret was born?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: No!
MR. COCKRELL: Was it just in private that they disagreed?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Well, I don't think too many people knew that they didn't see [eye-to-eye] together, but I kind of watch people and I knew it.
MR. COCKRELL: Did he ever talk about his mother-in-law?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: Not at all. I forget what he called her.
MR. COCKRELL: Would it have been just Mrs. Wallace?
MRS. HAUKENBERRY: No. He had a special name. [Pause]. I guess he called her by her first name.
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Letters Home by Harry Truman Monty Poen 1984

• In terms of MGW, this book contains virtually nothing of a primary nature, and very little secondary material. Still the last line of HST’s letter of May 8 implies a great deal more information than the words convey. In fact, after reading MGW’s letters in Letters From Father, with her constant remarks as to how much she misses her daughter and granddaughter, HST’s line almost sounds ominous.
19: Poen’s remarks about HST’s attempts to impress MGW during the courtship
It wasn’t shyness alone that controlled young Truman’s pen. He felt that unless he made good, unless he became a successful businessman, he was unworthy of Bess’s hand. At every turn, Bess’s mother, Madge Gates Wallace, reminded him that the Wallaces stood among Independence’s social elite. So, whenever Harry visited Bess, he tried to impress Madge Wallace. “I am glad your mother like[d] my efforts on the piano,” he wrote. “I am ashamed of it myself. But you know a farmer can’t be a pianist, much as he’d like to be.”
207: Poen’s remarks concerning HST’s plans to bring the Wallaces to Washington to visit their mother
The medical reports promised that Mrs. Truman [HST’s mother] would be up and about in two months’ time. The broken hip showed signs of mending. “I was glad to get your letter and hear about the X rays for Mamma,” Harry thanked Vivian.
But a few weeks later, when the doctor tried to sit Mamma up in a wheelchair, the pain was too great. She grew weaker, and Harry prepared to fly home. On his return to Washington, he planned to bring Bess’s brothers George and Frank back with him because their mother, Madge Wallace (who lived with Bess and Harry in the White House), longed for a family reunion. And to firm things up, the President wrote a letter.
THE WHITE HOUSE
May 8, 1947
Dear George:
They’ve moved the clock up on us here, so I’ll want to leave a half hour earlier than I thought. If you and May and Frank and Natalie could be out at Mamma’s at 11:45, then we can get off the ground at 12 or 12:15, and that will put us here at 5:30 Eastern Daylight Time.
I’m looking forward to a nice visit with you. We’ll have lunch on the plane. I wrote Frank a good stiff letter. So I hope he’ll come. We’ve arranged to have a nice time while you are here, and all of us are looking forward to it.
Your mother is particularly anxious for all of you to come.
Sincerely,
Harry
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Doris Miller Oral History 1985

• Bess Truman's hairdresser from early 1950's until the First Lady's death in 1982. Interviewer Pamela Smoot assisted by Steve Harrison.
• Remarks by a person that knew MGW very little, if at all. She did, however, come to know Mrs. Truman quite well.
21 -- The relationship between BWT and MGW.
MR. HARRISON: Could you tell that story that you just told us, about Madge Wallace, that comment she [BWT] made about --
MS. MILLER: Oh, about the home? Well, I just always felt like that the home was -- Mrs. Truman felt like it was, you know, her mother's home, and she kept it that way. She never told me that but just through my association with her, I think -- and I think she rather enjoyed it like her mother had the home. She and her mother, you know, they [were] both together there, and I think she was contented and happy and they enjoyed one another so much, you know. They'd sit out on their back screened-in porch, you know, and they were friends as well as loving one another, I'm quite sure of that, because they both appreciated one another a lot.
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Bess W. Truman Margaret Truman 1986

• In my opinion, this book is the key to understanding Mrs. Wallace. Margaret Truman does a remarkable job of combining a loving family member's personal recollections with the distance and analysis of a historian. She considers many things usually ignored by other biographers and paints what I consider to be the most accurate picture of her grandmother. Read the remarks below, then read the entire book.
1: MGW as a young mother
Her [BWT’s] mother, Margaret Gates Wallace, whom everyone called Madge, was a dark, petite beauty. She called the baby “Bessie” after her closest friend, New Yorker Bessie Madge Andrews, who she had met while attending the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.
....
When Bess was two years old, her father sold the house on Ruby Street and moved to a larger house at 608 North Delaware Street, one of the most fashionable addresses in Independence. There is not much doubt that Bess’s mother had a lot to say about their choice of a new home. She was now living only two blocks away from an imposing two-and-one-half-story mansion that Bess’s grandfather, George Porterfield Gates, had built on the corner of North Delaware Street and Blue Avenue (since renamed Van Horne Road) in the year of her birth.
3: David Wallace’s financial condition
When twenty-one-year-old Madge Gates fell in love with twenty-three-year-old David Wallace, George Gates had taken a very dim view of the match. Like most American fathers, he could not quite bring himself to forbid it. But he made ominous noises and did everything in his power to delay it, until the young couple threatened to elope. George Gates capitulated, and the wedding took place in the First Presbyterian Church on June 13, 1883. It was front-page news in the local paper.
George Gates did not think that David Wallace could support his oldest daughter in the style to which she was accustomed. The young husband had no training or interest in business. He was going to rely for an income on the perilous path of politics. David’s father, Benjamin Wallace, had been elected mayor of Independence in 1869. Thereafter, he had represented a Jackson County district in the state legislature. With his political pull, he had David appointed to a clerkship in the state senate when he was fourteen. At the age of eighteen, the year after his father died, David was appointed Deputy Recorder of Marriage Licenses in Independence.
I doubt that David ever did a day’s work at either job. The newspapers regularly inveighed against the political bosses for their habit of appointing assistants and deputies whose only task was to get out the vote on election day. But these youthful appointments probably gave David Wallace the illusion that politics was an easy way to make a living. That might have been true if he had remained a bachelor. But few political jobs paid enough to support a wife with Madge Gates’s expensive tastes.
In the very first year of their marriage, there was an ominous sign of financial strain. The bridegroom had to mortgage their Ruby Street house to secure a $700 loan.
7: Early signs of ill health in MGW
But it was not the sort of salary a man needed to support three children and a wife with expensive tastes.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Virginia Wallace was growing up. Surviving letters from her mother indicate that by the time she reached high school, Bess was already assuming a surprising amount of responsibility for the care of her two younger brothers. For a while there was a fourth child in the house, a little sister named Madeline, born in the mid-1890s. She died when she was about three years old. Giving birth to four children in ten years -- and losing one -- strained Madge Wallace’s health and nerves. She had always been considered “delicate” -- a word that suggested both physical and emotional fragility in this era. Madge took vacations at nearby Platte City, where her sister Maud had married a wealthy banker, William Strother Well, and left her fourteen-year-old daughter in charge of the house.
One letter, somewhat incongruously addressed to “my dear little daughter,” told Bess not to let her brother Frank out of the house after dark because he had a cold and to make sure Frank took citrate of magnesia every night and did not forget his Listerine. She was also told to “order what you need and want at the grocery and meat shop.”
**9: MGW raised BWT to be a lady
While she hung around with these rowdy males, Bess was not allowed to forget that she was Madge Gates Wallace’s daughter. She was expected to be a lady, most of the time. This idea of the lady who concerned herself only with the genteel aspects of life, with art and culture and spiritual values, was still very much alive in the 1880s
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and 1890s. Madge Gates Wallace was a lady from the top of her well-coifed head to the tips of her elegant fingers. Although she tolerated her daughter’s athletic prowess, Madge insisted that Bess acquire the social graces.
12: MGW’s refusal to recognize her husband’s drinking problem
For Bess and her two older brothers, Frank and George, this must have been the beginning of a troubled time. They knew about their father’s drinking and so did the neighbors -- often he was carried home by friends and deposited on the front porch. Complicating the problem was Madge Gates Wallace’s refusal to recognize it. She never reproached or lectured her husband for one of these lapses. That would have been ungenteel. She was polite and even sympathetic as he struggled through the following day’s hangover and remorse. She acted as if Father had twisted his ankle or caught a bad cold.
13: Family expenses prevent Bess from attending college
The presence of a new baby [Fred] in the household made Madge Wallace even more dependent on her daughter. Still, there were several servants on the payroll. As someone who knew her well put it, “Mrs. Wallace never spent much time in the kitchen.”
Her mother’s health and bad nerves, exacerbated by her husband’s drinking, were not the real reasons why Bess did not go away to college, as her mother had gone to the Cincinnati Conservatory and her friend Mary Paxton was eventually to depart for Hollins in Virginia, and their mutual friend, Charlie Ross, was to go to the University of Missouri at Columbia. The real explanation was the sad fact that Bess’s father could not afford to send her.
15: David Wallace’s financial problems grow worse
In 1902, $3.50 was the equivalent of about $75 in today’s inflated currency. To be unable to pay this size debt, and go through the humiliation of being reported to his employers, must have been an excruciating experience for Madge Gates Wallace’s husband. But all he could do was beg the reluctant government for more money. This time his boss decided to get some backing, and he persuaded two inspectors from the New Orleans District headquarters to issue a report stating that David Wallace “was the most efficient man in the office at this port [Kansas City], yet his salary, $1,400 per annum, is the smallest paid any clerk here.” This endorsement persuaded the parsimonious Republicans in Washington to approve a $200 a year raise.
During these same years, David Wallace was borrowing money from his father-in-law to pay his taxes. In 1901, he was two years in arrears and was in a panic that his house was going to be advertised and sold by the county collector. That same year George Porterfield Gates paid for some badly needed shingling and painting, which cost several hundred dollars. When Grandfather Gates gave eleven-year-old George Wallace $5 for a Christmas present, his mother used it to help pay for an overcoat, which he “needed badly.”
His double life as cheerful hail-fellow politician and debt-haunted failure became more and more unbearable to David Wallace. At home he received little consolation or support from his wife. Madge Gates Wallace had been raised as a lady, shielded from the harsh economic realities of American life. Like most women of her era, she believed there was a “woman’s sphere” and a “man’s sphere,” and what happened in the man’s sphere was none of a wife’s business, especially if she was a lady. Her two sisters had married successful men. She could not understand -- and probably could not love -- a man who was a failure.
18: MGW reaction to DW’s suicide
Police, a doctor, other neighbors pounded up and down the stairs inside the house. For a half hour, there was a faint hope that David Wallace might live. Then Madge Gates Wallace began screaming and sobbing.
**19: The aftermath of the DW’s suicide
Even today, most families will try to persuade a newspaper not to publish that a loved one has committed suicide. In 1903, it was considered a far worse stigma. For Madge Gates Wallace it was mortifying beyond belief. It flung her from the top of Independence’s social hierarchy to the bottom. She could not bear the disgrace. “She just went to pieces,” was the way one member of the family described it, years later.
Complicating her collapse was the discovery that David Wallace was heavily in debt and had left no will. The ever sympathetic surveyor of the port of Kansas City, William Kessinger, wrote to Washington suggesting that his deputy’s salary for the month of June be paid in full. The Republican scrooges at the Treasury informed him that there was “no authority of law” to pay a nickel beyond the day of David Wallace’s death.
It is chilling to think about what might have happened to Bess and her three younger brothers if her grandparents were not alive and willing and able to rescue them. George Gates and his wife rushed back to Independence by the fastest trains to comfort their shattered daughter and her children. Nana’s tall, bearded
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presence not only guaranteed economic security; he was a crucial, steadying influence. His gentle wife Elizabeth played an equally vital role in offering their shattered daughter and grandchildren a loving refuge. Elizabeth Gates knew from firsthand experience the blows that fate could deliver. When she was a child of eight in England, her entire family had died of some epidemic disease and she had been sent to America to live with her sister.
The four young Wallaces and their mother were welcomed into the big house on North Delaware Street. But Madge Wallace’s grief and shame could not be assuaged by this retreat. Her parents decided it might be better if they all retreated from Independence for a while. They had left their ailing son, Frank, in Colorado Springs, probably with the same Gates relative whom Madge and the children had visited during the previous summer. Telegraphs whizzed to this sympathetic man. In twenty-four hours the grief-stricken refugees were aboard the Missouri Pacific’s crack flyer, The Santa Fe, which deposited them in Colorado Springs the following day.
They stayed a full year.
20-21: BWT learns from what she considers to be her mother’s mistakes
She saw that her mother’s way of loving her father, the passive, tender but more or less mindless love of the genteel lady, was a mistake. It failed to share the bruises, the fears, the defeats a man experienced in his world. It left him exposed to spiritual loneliness. If she ever found a man she could trust -- and that must have seemed a dubious proposition during that first sorrowful year -- Bess Wallace vowed she would share his whole life, no matter how much pain it cost her. She rejected absolutely and totally the idea of a woman’s sphere and a man’s sphere.
Bess did not blame her mother for her father’s death. She loved Madge Wallace too. To love was added the pity she undoubtedly felt when she saw how shattered her mother was by the catastrophe. Blame was not a word Bess could ever use. But a kind of judgment, an emotional separation took place between mother and daughter during that year in Colorado, or soon after their return to Independence in 1904.
Bess saw that she had to become a very different woman from her mother. Her success as an athlete and her role as an older sister probably prepared her for this change. But the primary force was sheer necessity. Someone had to take charge of their family and Madge Wallace was incapable of it. At nineteen, Bess became the parent of her three brothers -- and the semi-parent of her mother. Even then, it was obvious that Madge Wallace would never resume a normal life.
22: MGW becomes a recluse
Other Independence women busied themselves in charitable activities, such as The Needlework Guild, which made clothes for the poor, pursued culture in study clubs, and enjoyed themselves at weekly bridge club meetings. Sadly, Madge Wallace remained behind the substantial walls of her parents’ house, a virtual recluse.
It is not hard to imagine the pain this caused her children, especially her daughter. At the end of her year at Barstow, Bess did not go east to college like many of her classmates. She went home and resumed her role as head of the Wallace family and her mother’s companion. But she did not become a recluse. With that interesting blend of pity and objective judgment that colored her relationship with her mother, Bess continued to enjoy the world around her.
30: BWT’s attitudes towards privacy
She herself had experienced the anguish that public knowledge of private sorrows can cause. Her mother, the self-sentenced prisoner of shame at 219 North Delaware Street, was living proof of the damage, the pain.
30: The neighborly MGW
Madge Gates Wallace often baked cakes and pies and sent samples to the neighbors. It was the only kind of cooking she enjoyed. Harry’s cousins, the Nolands, now lived at 216 North Delaware, the house across the street. They had recently received one of these gifts and had asked Harry Truman if he would like to return the plate. He had accepted, they later recalled, “with something approaching the speed of light.”
“Aunt Ella told me to thank your mother for the cake,” Harry said. “I guess I ought to thank her too. I ate a big piece.”
“Come in,” Bess said.
**47: MGW’s becomes an impediment to the courtship
Early in the summer of 1913, a little more than two years after Bess had turned down his proposal, she paid another of her rare visits to Grandview. Madge Wallace revealed her displeasure -- disguised, of course, as concern -- by taking it into her head that some sort of accident had happened on the trip out. She tried to call the Trumans, and the operator refused to connect her. This apparently convinced her that a major disaster had occurred, and she was
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frantic until Bess came home. Harry apologized for the awful phone service -- he vowed not to pay the bill -- and asked anxiously: “Do you suppose she’ll ever let you come again?”
Bess’s solution to her mother’s hovering presence was longer and longer walks. Harry cheerfully accepted the opportunity to be alone with her.
**51: HST’s concerns about being accepted by MGW
Although he poured out all this emotion, Harry still signed his letter “Most sincerely.” A reason for this odd hesitation may have been a worry that he aired at the end of one letter, a few weeks after Bess told him of her change of heart. “Do you suppose your mother’ll care for me well enough to have me in her family?” By this time he had been visiting the Wallaces and Gateses long enough to grasp Madge Gates Wallace’s formidable presence in Bess’s life and the lives of her other children. He had also detected Madge’s polite, subtle antagonism to him in his pursuit of her only daughter.
54: MGW’s relationship with BWT’s friends
During Mary’s absence, Bess had become a good friend of Mary’s younger sister, Libby. Both Paxton girls also had a tender, touching, relationship with Madge Gates Wallace. Apparently, they never stopped yearning for the mother they had lost in 1903, and Mrs. Wallace was a substitute with whom they corresponded and to whom they often sent Christmas presents.
**55-56: The influence of MGW in her children’s lives
Then there was her mother, always there to solicit her companionship, to suggest, however subtly, that maybe it did not matter if Harry Truman failed. Without ever quite saying it, Madge Wallace hinted in her oblique elegiac way that it might be better for all concerned if Bess lived out her youth as her mother’s companion, endlessly solacing her grief, wordlessly commemorating the tragedy they shared.
The power of Madge’s influence in the family became visible when Frank and George Wallace married. Madge persuaded her father to divide the garden and give her sons two lots on which he built virtually identical bungalows. There they began their wedded lives, under their mother’s direct observation. They and their wives soon learned that Madge Wallace never went to bed until all the lights in these two houses were out. She never permitted either wife to walk past 219 North Delaware Street without emerging to ask where she was going. It was not done in a tyrannical way or with a nasty tone of voice. Madge Wallace was still a lady. Words of endearment, a gentle smile accompanied the question. But it was very clear to both women that their husbands were never going to be permitted to leave their mother’s presence, as long as she lived.
If this was how Madge Wallace regarded her sons, it is not hard to imagine how intense was her attachment to her only daughter. Nor is it hard for me to imagine -- because in this case I saw, in later years, the persistence of the antagonism -- her dislike of Harry Truman, the farmer who was threatening to take her daughter away from her. That Bess Wallace was able to resist this steady, subtle but oh-so-powerful opposition to the man she had come to love after so much hesitation is a tribute to her strength of character -- and to the power of Harry Truman’s love.
60-61: MGW reaction to HST’s enlistment in W.W.I
Although Frank and George Wallace were both younger than thirty-three-year-old Harry Truman, neither enlisted. I am certain that their mother was the reason. A woman who would not permit married sons to move off her family’s property could not bear the thought of them going to war in distant France. Bess struggled to support Harry’s decision but it was very, very hard to accept. Madge Wallace undoubtedly used all her mournful guile to make him look uncaring and indifferent.
65-66: MGW’s response to the possibility of her sons being drafted
She also had to cope with her mother’s anxiety when her brother Frank Wallace was called in the draft. She shared this worry with Harry, who wrote: “Hope Frank will be blind the day of the exam.” He knew that in many ways Frank was as essential to Madge Wallace’s well-being as Bess. Every day when he came home from work, Frank visited 219 North Delaware and spent a half hour with his mother.
Frank failed the eye test and stayed home for the time being. But another of Bess’s brothers, George, was also on the draft rolls and was certain to pass when called. If the war lasted long enough, Frank’s eyes would not keep him out either. In the salty Missouri slang of my Aunt May, George’s widow, with whom I have spent many hours discussing the early years of Bess’s life, Madge Wallace “went up in smoke” at the thought of her sons going to France. Bess had to put aside her own more complicated anxiety about Harry Truman and spend hours calming and reassuring her mother.
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81-82: MGW’s reaction to the honeymoon, and the decision to live at 219 North Delaware
On July 5, Bess’s brother Fred wrote to her, reporting that there was a brisk traffic in wedding presents at 219 North Delaware. “You seem to be having some time in Chicago and must like it pretty well by the way you are sticking around,” Fred observed. Then he revealed the instigator of his letter. “Mom says if she doesn’t hear from you, she’s going to telegraph the hotel.”
....
Bess had a wonderful time too, but it was she who decided that their honeymoon had to end because she could not stop worrying about her mother. So they rumbled home in their roadster and took up residence at 219 North Delaware. It was the logical place for them to stay, for emotional reasons -- Madge Wallace’s dependence on her daughter -- as well as financial and geographical ones.
**85-86: HST decides to enter politics
Reviving the idea he had mentioned in his letter from France, he was planning to run for eastern judge of Jackson County. He was plunging into the same political milieu that had destroyed her father. I have no recorded evidence of what Madge Wallace thought of this idea -- but I do not need any. She undoubtedly expressed profound horror -- especially when she was alone with Bess.
Frank Wallace had loaned Harry some money when the store began running short of cash. But Madge Wallace, who had the cash she had inherited from her father, never offered her son-in-law a cent, as far as I know. On the contrary, while Truman and Jacobson were closing their doors for the last time in April, Madge, as oblivious as ever to financial realities, was planning a trip to the East Coast with her son Fred when he finished the school year at the University of Missouri.
Fred always had been Madge’s pet, but since Bess’s marriage, she could not bear to let him out of her sight. She moved to Columbia and kept house for him during his first year away from home. Fred never objected in the least to being spoiled this way. In the opinion of some of the older members of the family, the trip east was probably his idea. “If there was any money around, Freddy could never resist spending it,” one of my aunts once remarked.
Perhaps this egotism -- I can’t bring myself to call it selfishness because I don’t think Madge Wallace was aware of what she was doing -- enabled Bess to ignore her mother and back her husband’s decision to become a politician.
**88-89: MGW’s East Coast trip of 1922
While Bess was going through this ordeal, her mother was touring the East Coast with her son Fred. They stayed at the Copley Plaza in Boston and visited some Gates cousins in Newburyport. They sashayed on to the Belmont in New York, where they did the town from “Fifth Avenue to the slums.” They went on to the Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia and from there to the New Willard in Washington, and finally to Richmond, where Mary Paxton Keeley met them and took them out to Curles Neck Farm.
Throughout this three week expedition, Madge Wallace wrote numerous letters to Bess, one of which began: “My dear little girl” -- the same salutation she had used when Bess was fourteen. Madge frequently told Bess she hoped that she was “feeling fine” or “well” -- but not once did Bess mention the miscarriage or her nerves to her. It is equally significant, I suppose, that in the nine or ten letters and postcards from the travelers, there is not one mention of Harry Truman or his political struggle. Madge Wallace seldom expressed her disapproval directly. That was not a lady’s style.
100: BWT runs the house
In a domestic crisis, however, it was Bess who took charge. Her mother came down with intestinal flu and the maid failed to show up. Madge Wallace was being visited by her old friend, Bessie Andrews, who was, Bess remarked to Harry, “worse than no help at all.”
103-104: The Trumans decide to remain at 219 North Delaware beyond the point of financial necessity
It did not seem to matter that he had urged her to come with him. “The child” was her excuse to stay home now, although her two sisters-in-law were ready and willing to substitute for her, and Madge Wallace was in the big house with her and quite healthy, except for a sciatic hip. (Mary Paxton had remarked in 1922 when Madge was sixty that she was the youngest looking woman for her age that she had ever seen.) Madge, of course, was always eager to encourage this reluctance to leave home with her subtle manifestations of need for her “dear little girl.”
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Although Harry Truman was still paying off the debts he had acquired when the haberdashery failed, he was now making enough money to build a house. He even had a bank of his own to give him a mortgage. But the subject seems to have become moot. On the contrary, Bess seemed to want him to become part of the Wallace enclave in the indissoluble, all inclusive way that Natalie Ott, Frank Wallace’s wife, and May Southern, George Wallace’s wife, had joined the family.
One day around this time, May noticed her sister-in-law Natalie passing her house and asked in her cheerful way where she was going. “To Kansas City,” said tiny, frowning Natalie, “But I’m not going to get the streetcar at the corner because if I do, Mother Wallace is going to come out of the house and ask me where I’m going. I’m not planning to do anything wrong. I just want to go someplace without telling her about it!”
Madge Gates Wallace was still largely a recluse who seldom left 219 North Delaware Street except to visit her sister Maud in Platte City and her sister Myra in Kansas City. Inevitably, her family had become her only interest in life, and she devoted almost every waking hour to worrying and fretting over them. Separation from them invariably produced anxiety. Whenever they left the house, she still had to know where they were going and what they were planning to do.
It was difficult for Bess to live day in and day out with such an attitude without absorbing some of it into her own feelings. She could remain independent of her mother on matters that required thoughtful analysis or decisive action, but in matters as indefinite as absence from home or as casual as wanting to see the Queen of Rumania it was easy to slip into disagreement with her traveling man.
108-109: MGW assumes ownership of 219 North Delaware
But there were some compensations for being Judge Truman’s wife. She told Harry one of them with unconcealed pleasure. She and her mother went shopping for furniture for the downstairs bedroom. Madge Wallace had decided to move to this room, where her parents had slept, because her sciatic hip was making it difficult for her to climb the stairs. The store manager gave Madge “quite a bit off,” Bess reported. “He laid great stress on the fact that he knew Mr. Tucker [the owner] would want to do it for you.”
That little story emphasizes a new fact in the lives of the Trumans and the Wallaces; 219 North Delaware now belonged to Madge Gates Wallace. Her mother, Elizabeth Gates, had died in 1924, about six months after my birth. (It is one of my great regrets that no one had a picture taken of the four generations of Gates-Wallace-Truman women alive for that half year.) She left most of her estate, including the house, to her ailing son, Frank E. Gates, who lived in Colorado Springs. But his health was so frail he could not leave Colorado, so he sold the house to Madge for $10,000.
Those who lived there, including Bess, were constantly aware that it was Madge’s house. She made many of the curtains by hand. She bought new furniture and disposed of old pieces she no longer wanted. In the late 1920s, she and her son Fred embarked on an ambitious redecorating program, using money Madge had inherited from Frank Gates, who died a year after their mother. Crystal lamps were installed in the living rooms and music room, and the chandelier in the living room went to the dump. The mirrors and wood shelving around the big fireplace were removed, and the library was repainted white with red trim, which in retrospect strikes me as ghastly.
Until she decided to move downstairs, Madge Wallace occupied the big master bedroom in the front of the house. Bess and Harry slept in the same east bedroom Bess had occupied since she came to the house in 1904. After two years in a crib in my parents’ room, I moved to a bedroom of my own, which was connected to theirs by a passageway built onto the upstairs porch. My uncle Fred, Bess’s youngest brother, slept in a room down the hall from me. From my four- and five-year-old viewpoint, he was a cheerful bachelor, boyish for his age, who liked to romp around the house with me.
Dinner always emphasized for me that we were living in Madge Wallace’s house. She and my father sat at opposite ends of the table. Whether she sat at the head and he at the foot or vice versa was anybody’s guess. I sat between my mother and grandmother, on her left, and Fred sat opposite us, on her right. The atmosphere was always very formal. My manners were expected to be perfect, and so was everyone’s costume. I always put on a clean dress, as did Bess and Madge. Fred and my father wore suits and ties.
The conversation was always subdued, even when Fred and my father discussed politics. No one ever raised his or her voice. Nor did Bess ever lose her temper with me, even when I did something as goofy as knocking over a water glass. Under no circumstances were Madge’s nerves to be agitated. Bess sometimes offered her opinion of a political problem or a politician (often one and the same), but on that subject Madge maintained a chilly silence.
110-111: MGW’s relationship with her sons
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To outside observers, life in the Wallace enclave seemed to be proceeding serenely. Bess’s two older brothers and their wives still lived in their small houses beside the main house. Madge also bought these from Frank Gates and sold them to her sons for “one dollar and other valuable considerations.” But inside the family, things were not so peaceful. Banker Frank Wallace was in constant turmoil over a quarrel that developed between the Platte City relatives (Aunt Maud’s husband and children) and Boulware Wallace (Aunt Myra’s husband) over the value of their shares in the Waggoner-Gates mill.
Frank still spent a half hour with his mother every day when he came home from work. But George Wallace had a very different attitude. Sharp-tongued and high spirited, George seemed to resent his mother’s smothering presence. Although he could not break away from her, he seldom went near her, and when he did the result was frequently a quarrel. He worked as an order clerk in a Kansas City lumber mill.
But these were minor worries compared to the anxiety generated by Bess’s youngest brother, Fred. He was trained as an architect, but he did not seem able to make enough money at his profession to set up on his own. Even if he had been able to do so, I doubt if he could have left his mother. Mary Paxton, in a letter to Bess, remarked that is was wonderful that Fred and his mother were “pals.” But Fred’s life, as it developed over the next few decades, suggests that it might have been better for him if he had cut Madge’s silver cord.
Born in 1900, Fred grew up with the century. Everyone liked him. He was charming, good-looking, and he loved a party. Of the three brothers, he was the one who developed the strongest physical resemblance to his father. (That fact alone may explain Bess’s nervous spasms in the night.) By his late twenties, Fred began showing ominous signs that he had inherited David Willock Wallace’s weakness for liquor. Friends carried Fred home completely ossified on more than one night. As she had done with her husband, Madge Wallace never said a word of reproach to her son. Instead, she often would sit up all night beside his bed and continue the vigil into the next day. It is not pleasant to think of the memories these episodes must have stirred in her mind -- and in her daughter’s mind.
111: MGW’s tolerance for MT’s childhood games
One day I dug a marvelous canal through the backyard and filled it with water, which demolished some of my grandmother’s favorite flowers. I launched a fleet of boats made from walnut shells, each with a tiny individual sail, and played admiral for several hours before I was discovered. It is interesting that Madge Wallace, although she was very upset, did not say a word to me. The complaint was made to Bess, who ordered me to fill up my miniature version of Suez, or else.
118: Fred Wallace’s relationship with his mother and sister
But Bess never said a word of reproach to Fred, as far as I know. With him, she followed her mother’s example of suffering in silence. Was it Fred’s resemblance to his father? Perhaps. Fred also was an artist at displaying remorse. He knew exactly how to play on his mother’s and sister’s sympathy.
120: An exchange of letters between BWT in Biloxi and HST in Independence
I did not know it, but Bess was not much happier with Biloxi. In one of her letters to Harry, she referred to it as “this burg.” It was not all Biloxi’s fault. Bess missed her husband and her mother and other members of the Wallace clan.
....
While we basked in the sunshine on the Gulf, Harry Truman divided his time between Grandview and Delaware Street. In one revealing exchange, he told Bess that he had “had dinner with your mother who by the way seemed really glad to see me.”
122: MGW writes BWT in Biloxi
During this same period, Bess received a number of letters from her mother. With her marvelous ability to ignore unpleasant realities, Madge Wallace never mentioned the political uproar swirling around her son-in-law. In fact, she never even mentioned him, period. Most of one letter was devoted to more improvements on the house -- painting the exterior, the selection of new awnings for the porches. She urged Bess to write George, who had been ill, “often.”
125: BWT considers the ramifications of leaving her mother behind for Washington
The more she thought about the future, the more Bess wanted Harry to take the collector’s job. Staying home in the accustomed warmth and closeness of the Wallace enclave was enormously important to her. She found it hard to face the guilt she would feel if she went to Washington and abandoned her mother. I am using
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psychological language here -- although I again foreclose any claims to being an expert in the field. In reality, Madge Wallace had a son and daughter-in-law living in the house with her, and in 1934 they presented her with a grandson. But Bess knew, perhaps not in explicit words, that Madge would make her feel that she was abandoned.
126: BWT worries about the welfare of her family members
Her mother was not the only person about whom Bess worried. There was also her brother Fred and his drinking bouts. Her fragile daughter was also very much on her mind.
139: BWT attempts to relieve her mother’s grief at their separation by writing letters to her
Although Bess enjoyed most aspects of their new life in the nation’s capital, the pull of home remained strong. She spent at least an hour every day writing letters to her family, above all to her mother. She even arranged to have a special delivery letter arrive each Sunday so her mother would not be “blue” all day -- as Madge Wallace was quick to tell her when a letter did not come.
141: BWT tries to divide her attentions between her husband and her mother
Harry Truman was making a painful discovery. There was a limit to how much Bess could give herself to him if it involved separation from her mother. She was a divided woman. Her sense of responsibility for Madge Gates Wallace’s happiness went deeper than either of them could understand. It was simply a fact, a fundamental response that was too embedded in Bess’s feelings to resist.
Writing more as a biographer than as a daughter, I can see a sort of rough justice at work. There was a part of Harry Truman’s soul -- where he spoke in solitude to history and his God -- that Bess could not reach. Here we are encountering a part of her soul that neither his love for her nor her love for him could touch -- that dark, heartbreaking need to console Madge Gates Wallace for the wound fate had inflicted on her.
At times I wonder if it was an even more complex need. As we shall see, Bess was happiest when she could share herself not only with her husband and her mother, but with the rest of the Wallace family. In some primary region of her heart, she endlessly relived their original retreat to 219 North Delaware Street, their drawing together in anguish and grief and consolation after her father’s death.
146: Further remarks on Natalie Wallace’s relationship with her mother-in-law
As we have seen, her sister-in-law Natalie chafed at living under her mother-in-law’s omnipresent eye.
150: MGW offers advice to BWT after Bess is settled in Washington
Nettie, the maid of all work and sometime cook who had been a big help the previous year, was getting married, and this made her very unreliable. She began disappearing for several days at a time. From Independence came advice that ignored the Trumans’ tight budget. “Let the house go and take your dinners out,” Madge Wallace told Bess.
I rediscovered my old friends at Gunston Hall and met a few new ones, so Bess was soon able to assure her mother that I was perfectly content -- news that Madge seemed reluctant to believe.
**152: MGW appears to become more accepting of HST, but still cannot adjust to the separations from her daughter
He stopped in Independence to see Mrs. Wallace, and she told Bess what a pleasant surprise that was. Madge was beginning to look with a little more favor on her son-in-law.
But Madge was still unreconciled to separation from Bess. On April 16, when Bess had been in Washington less than three months, her mother began asking her when she was coming home. This became a regular feature of succeeding letters that spring. Bess tried to defend herself by sending Madge a rundown of her schedule. “What a world of things you have to do this week!” Madge exclaimed. “How do you keep it up? I imagine you will enjoy the quiet and rest when you come home.” Underlining each word, she added: “How much longer will it be before you are here? We are growing very impatient.”
155: Money, as well as MGW, prevents BWT & MT from attending FDR’s acceptance speech
Madge Wallace and the pull of 219 North Delaware were not the only reasons Mother and I stayed home. Money was also a problem, as Dad’s remarks about income and outgo make clear.
160: HST makes an oblique remark about sharing Bess with MGW
“You are not only Juno, Venus, Minerva all in one but perhaps Proserpina too. (You’d better look that one up.)”
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Proserpina, for those who don’t have a classical dictionary handy, was a goddess who spent six months of each year with her husband in Hades, separated from her grieving mother. Was the Senator suggesting a certain resemblance to their own situation? I can’t be absolutely certain, but he did not ask Bess to look up Juno, Venus, or Minerva.
**162: Remarks by MT that touches on the essence of MGW’s personality and nature
Shortly before Mother and Dad and I went to Biloxi, Fred Wallace’s wife, Christine, had given birth to a daughter, Marion. In her daily letters to Bess, Madge Wallace reported in detail on how the baby and Christine were doing as well as on other matters, such as the antics of Chris’s first child, David, and troubles with the help. She called her regular maids “two of the slowest mortals that walk.” She said they reminded her of the time that her father had pointed to their Negro handyman, Luke, and asked Fred to sight him on a tree to see if he was moving. These plaintive letters probably helped to delay Bess’s departure to Washington for several weeks.
All her life, Bess felt a responsibility for her brothers. It was a feeling that went beyond the ordinary loyalty of an older sister. She was the acknowledge leader of the family. All her mother’s power over her daughter and her sons came from not leading, from a refusal or inability (take your pick) to accept responsibility, from a sweet, pathetic passivity.
163: MGW writes BWT about the death of Josephine Ragland Southern, daughter of Ruth Noland Ragland (niece of Ethel and Nellie Noland)
Dad flew out for the funeral. Mother and I remained in Washington, because she did not want me to miss any more school. But Bess was terribly shaken by the death of someone so young, someone who was so needed by her children. It evoked memories of another baffling death on Delaware Street. Her mother’s letter, describing the tragic scene, seemed almost calculated to evoke such feelings, although I know this was not the case.
Madge reported that the Nolands were deeply grateful for Dad’s visit. They said “nobody but Harry would have come so far to help them.” She told Bess that Mrs. Noland, Nellie’s aging mother, was shattered by the death and Nellie was almost as bad. “I keep thinking of the dear little home that Jodie and James Allen [Southern] planned and built and were so happy in it. It is all so hard to understand,” Madge wrote.
163: Reference to MGW and BWT’s church attendance (or lack thereof)
Mother had enrolled me in Sunday school when I was seven or eight, but I complained so loudly that she accepted my offer of a compromise. If I went to church with her and sat absolutely still, I could abandon Sunday school. Since she seldom went to church (her mother never went) this was tantamount to an escape clause.
175: BWT considers the possibility the MGW may need to move to Washington with them
A few days later she issued Senator Truman marching orders on their quarters for the coming winter in Washington. She did not want to rent a house. “I don’t want to spend the whole winter working, and I don’t want to have to have a maid and I don’t want an extra bedroom.”
The way she underlined that last sentence made me wonder if this was the most important point. Back in Independence, Fred Wallace and his wife were thinking of moving out of 219 North Delaware Street. I suspect Bess was trying to avert the possibility of her mother joining us in Washington, DC. At this point in the long struggle between mother and husband, Harry Truman was in the ascendancy.
184: Brief mention of a letter from BWT to MGW
We went down to the Capitol the day the royal couple was presented to Congress. Mother wrote Grandmother Wallace a vivid letter about it.
189: The importance felt by BWT in remaining in contact with her mother
“I wired Mother this morning as soon as we got here,” Bess wrote. (The wire to Madge was written into the budget of every trip.)
193: The family listens to the radio on the night of the 1940 election
Dad astonished her (and me) by announcing that he was sure he was going to win and in the meantime would get some badly needed sleep. He went to bed, leaving us and Grandmother Wallace and Fred and Christine up to our chins in gloom.
200: MGW yearns for her daughter
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The spring visit had become a necessity to calm and console Madge Wallace. She was now in her eightieth year and was becoming childishly dependent on Bess. Once in January 1941, Bess telephoned when Madge was lying down. Later in the day, Bess telephoned again and Madge told her she was “about to have a good cry” because she did not get a chance to talk to her. Swelling in her ankles forced her to stay in bed, and she “lay there all day thinking of you and Margaret.” Even phone calls did not help much. In May, she told Bess that one had made her “homesick.”
Bess responded by turning up her worry machine several notches. Her letters were a series of inquiries about her mother’s ankles, Christine’s inflamed arm, Frank’s bad back. This was not entirely new. Thanks to Madge, she had been kept in touch with every cold, sore throat, toothache, and aching back that anyone in the Wallace enclave suffered. Bess tried to manage things from a distance of a thousand miles, warning Chris against taking her son David to school and her mother against cleaning the house until they were well again.
218-219: MGW proves incapable of living alone
The family decided they could not leave Grandmother Wallace alone at 219 North Delaware Street and moved her to a small apartment on nearby Maple Avenue. She hated it. She missed her garden, her spacious kitchen, the big old house that enabled her to feel she was still Madge Gates, in spite of her sorrow. Mother tried to manage things from Washington, writing worried letters asking whether Natalie and May Wallace were helping her shop, urging her not to overdo anything. She no doubt remembered what happened to Mamma Truman when she moved to unfamiliar quarters. This only multiplied her worry quotient.
After a flurry of long distance calls, a new plan was drawn up. Grandmother would live with Fred and Christine in Denver. I doubt that this thrilled Christine, but Mother and I went out to Independence in June and took Grandmother and a lot of things Freddy and Chris had not been able to ship, such as bed linen, to Denver.
229: MGW remarks on the likeliness of HST’s selection as VP candidate
In Denver, Grandmother Wallace and Freddy and Chris listened to the radio and read the newspapers with growing puzzlement. On the 20th, Grandmother wrote a letter telling Mother that she missed her and fighting off a “homesick spell.” She added that “F and I listened to several talks over the radio last night. They don’t seem to think Harry is not a candidate [in spite of what Bess had been telling her?].”
234: Natalie Wallace divulges the story of DW’s suicide to MT, possibly out of spite for MGW
When I was not very informative (mainly because I did not know very much) Aunt Natalie frowned and said: “I suppose it will all come out now, about the way your grandfather died. The reporters will dig it up. I’m sure its going to upset your mother and grandmother terribly.”
I did not have a clue to what she was talking about. “What do you mean?” I asked. “I thought he died of a heart attack or something like that.”
Aunt Natalie smiled sardonically. “He shot himself,” she said. “Frank found him.”
I could not have been more astonished if she had told me that she had seen David Willock Wallace ascend into heaven. I stumbled back to the big house and found Vietta Garr in the kitchen. She had been working for us for decades. I told her the story and asked her if it was true. Vietta nodded. She blamed it on a growth which (she had heard) David Wallace had discovered on the back of his neck. According to that version, he had been afraid of dying of cancer.
Mother came home, but some shred of my father’s good judgment told me not to say anything to her about Aunt Natalie’s revelation. I waited until Dad arrived later in the evening, and I asked him what he knew about it. I have never seen him so angry and upset. He seized my arm in a grip that he must have learned when he was wrestling calves and hogs around the farmyard. “Don’t you ever mention that to you mother,” he said.
He rocketed out of the house and down through the backyard to Aunt Natalie’s house. I have no idea what he said to her, but it is not pleasant to think about, even now. I was too shaken to think about it in 1944. Now I can see that Aunt Natalie had been living much too long in what amounted to her mother-in-law’s backyard. She was obviously striking back for the twenty-eight oppressive years with Madge Wallace breathing down her neck, sweetly inquiring what she was doing, where she was going every time Natalie left the house. Childless, Natalie had also grown to resent the hours Frank spent with his mother. It was not her sister-in-law Bess that Natalie was out to get with her revelation about David Willock Wallace, it was her mother-in-law. Everybody has a mean streak, I’m afraid, and when circumstances exacerbate it, watch out.
235-236: MGW writes to BWT early in the 1944 campaign
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Early in August 1944, after Grandmother Wallace had absorbed the shock of Dad’s nomination, she wrote Bess a touching, surprisingly perceptive letter. It began on the usual melancholy note. It was a lonely Sunday in Denver; Fred and Christine and the children had all gone to church, and she was sitting on the terrace thinking about us. “I somewhat realize what a task is before you, and Margie, dear,” she wrote, “and I wish in some way I could help.” As always, grandmother was being oblique. But I think that she was trying to tell Bess in this letter that she wanted her to face the future without worrying about her.
247: BWT writes a letter to Ethel Noland on April 11, 1945, describing the calm before the storm
In another letter to Ethel Noland, Bess conveyed a charming picture of domestic contentment. “Marg. has gone to a picture show and Harry to a poker party. Mother is practically asleep in her chair -- so it’s very peaceful.”
319: MGW’s health starts to decline
There was not a word of protest from Bess, in spite of the fact that Grandmother Wallace was seriously ill. Her heart was beginning to fail, and that caused severe swelling in her legs, which forced her to stay in bed.
338: Another illness of MGW
Her mother again became seriously ill early in December. Grandmother was eighty-six at this point and Mother became so alarmed, she summoned Fred Wallace from Denver. His presence seemed to inspire Madge Gates Wallace to rally, and by the time we went home to Independence for Christmas, she was almost well again.
A few weeks later, Bess wrote to Mary Paxton Keeley, who was so fond of Grandmother: “We were afraid for a day to two [Mother] was not going to make it. But we got her back here [to Washington] by air and she seemed no worse for the trip. And she can have every attention here and be under my eye too. She has to be coerced into doing a lot of things.
340: MGW’s reaction to MT’s desire to sing professionally
At the end of January, I went off to New York to resume my singing career. Grandmother Wallace, who thought I had fallen out of love with this idea, was very upset. She wept and said all sorts of awful things about her granddaughter appearing on the stage. Mother did not say a word against my decision -- and behind the scenes she did her best to calm her mother.
346: MGW’s health becomes unpredictable
During these first sunny months of the new term, Bess was also cheered by her mother’s surprising return to good health. After seeming to be in an inexorable decline, Grandmother Wallace’s Christmas rally continued, and by the time she went back to Independence in June, Dr. Wallace Graham, the White House physician, told Dad she was in better health than at any time in the previous two years.
374: MGW becomes more difficult to care for
Early in the spring, her mothers’ health went into another downward slide. Grandmother’s mind began to wander; she became very forgetful and would wake up Bess in the middle of the night at ask her anxious questions about Fred and other members of the family. By the time Bess took her back to Independence for the summer, the First Lady was almost as exhausted as the President.
376: MGW’s difficulties progress
She filled me in on other details of life in the Gates-Wallace manse. “Grandmother is taking all of us to the Plantation [a local restaurant] tomorrow to dinner. She surely had come to life since she has been home -- but [she is] back at her old tricks. Waked me up twice before 7:30 this morning wanting me to make the reservations. [She] thought it was already Sunday. You can easily imagine how happy I was!”
377: Near the end for MGW
She urged Mary Paxton Keeley to pay a visit. “Mother would love to see you if you get there on a good day. Today is a bad one -- doesn’t remember one thing for five minutes even. Told Vietta I haven’t been in to see her today and I have been there not less than ten times.”
Dad paid her a brief visit in July and spent the rest of the time worrying about the war in Korea, which dragged on although the Communists had implicitly admitted they could not win by agreeing to begin peace negotiations late in June. He could not ask Mother to leave Grandmother Wallace, but he could not resist going back to his old tactic of letting her know what she was missing.
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....
When Bess returned to Washington with her mother later in the month, she immediately reopened the questions of Chief Justice Vincent and his candidacy.
392-393: The death of MGW
About three weeks after the election, grandmother Wallace had a stroke. There was no longer any doubt that she was dying. Mother scarcely left her bedside, except for a cabinet dinner on the night of December 4, at which Adlai Stevenson was the guest of honor. Day by day, Grandmother grew weaker. Then came pneumonia. She slipped into a coma and died quietly at a little past noon on December 5, 1952.
For forty-nine years Mother had struggled to surround Madge Gates Wallace with a healing love. At times it had been a burden that would have destroyed a woman who lacked Bess Wallace Truman’s inner strength. Now, at last, she could feel she had triumphed over the blow that fate had struck in 1903. Although Grandmother never had been able to resume a normal life, her daughter’s devotion had enabled her to live with dignity and grace. In spite of her limitations, she remained an essentially loving and lovable woman.
Dad sat with Mother as Madge Gates Wallace died. Then he took charge and summoned the White House usher, J. B. West, Mother’s best friend on the staff. He made arrangements for us to take Grandmother Wallace to Independence. The next day, in one of his diary jottings, Dad showed that he had long since forgiven his mother-in-law for her early hostility to his courtship of Bess Wallace.
Yesterday at 12:30 my mother-in-law passed away. She was a grand lady. When I hear these mother-in-law jokes I don’t laugh. They are not funny to me, because I’ve had a good one. So has my brother. My mother was a good mother-in-law to Vivian’s and my wife. It gives me a pain in the neck to read the awful jokes that the so-called humorists crack about mother-in-laws.
Today we go to Missouri to bury her. Four years ago, 1946, I was on the same errand for my mother. [Dad was off by a year; it was 1947.] The sabotage press...made it appear that I was wasting public money to be decent to my mother. May God forgive them... I can’t and won’t.
The same lice will do the same publicity job when I take Mrs. Wallace, Bess and Margaret home to bury the mother-in-law.
To hell with them. When history is written they will be the sons of bitches -- not I.
In accordance with Grandmother’s wishes, her funeral was simple. To avoid the inevitable hordes of curiosity seekers, Mother decided to have the service at 219 North Delaware. Madge Gates Wallaces was buried in the Gates family plot -- not with her husband, who lay in the Wallace family plot. In death as in life, the tragedy that ended their marriage and marked their children continued to sunder them.
Mary Paxton Keeley came to the funeral to say farewell to her substitute mother. Not once but three times in the next few months, Bess mentioned in her letters how much this meant to her. “I don’t know when I have been so touched, that you came all the way up from Columbia for Mother’s services,” she wrote in one of her last letters from the White House. “And you know what it would have meant to her.”
Grandmother’s death drew dozens of letters of sympathy from Mother’s Washington and Independence friends. Many of the latter recalled happy times on Delaware Street. For Mother the death must have accentuated the sense of things coming to a close. But it also removed a burden that she had borne without complaining to anyone for five decades.
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Reathal Odum Oral History 1988

• Secretary to Bess Truman and companion to Madge Wallace. Interviewers Norm Reigle and Steve Harrison.
• Another intimate with little to say. Ms. Odum was in a position to know a great deal more than she tells. One wonders why she is hesitant to reveal more. See also Ms. Odum’s later oral history of 1990.
4 -- MGW's bedroom at 219 North Delaware
REIGLE: This room was generally the room [downstairs bedroom] .... Well, this was where Mrs. Wallace stayed in the last few years.
6 -- Odum's relationship to MGW
ODUM: Mrs. Truman and I shared a little ... oh, a small office together right off my bedroom [in the White House]. Then, if both President and Mrs. Truman were away, after I moved away from the White House, I'd come and stay and be a companion.
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May Wallace Oral History 1988

• Wife of George Wallace and sister-in-law to BWT & HST. Interviewer Neil Johnson.
• The memories of a daughter-in-law. A contradictory (and therefore interesting) account of MGW. Of special interest is the story concerning Natalie Wallace (Mrs. Frank Wallace, as May referred to her).
23-25 -- MGW and her children.
JOHNSON: Did her [BWT’s] mother play the piano? Bess didn't play the piano, I guess, did she?
WALLACE: No.
JOHNSON: Did Bess' mother play?
WALLACE: Yes, Mother Wallace had been to a very fine girl's school in the east, and she played. She did all of the things that a young lady was supposed to do.
JOHNSON: A finishing school, sort of.
WALLACE: Yes.
JOHNSON: Now I know you'd be awfully young, but would you have remembered anything of Bess' father, David Willock?
WALLACE: No, but my father did; Mr. Southern. And he, David Wallace, of course, killed himself. George, my husband, went in and found him; he heard the shot. [According to MT, Natalie Wallace said it was her husband, Frank, who found his father.] He went in there and I really think it did something to his nervous system, because they adored their father. He was a man that was, well, a good fellow, and he worked up here in the courthouse. But, I think old "mister liquor" got the best of him.
JOHNSON: Did your husband ever talk about that episode?
WALLACE: No, my father is the one that told me about it. No, they never talked about it.
And Mother Wallace, just after his death, she just became a recluse really. She moved her family to the Gates house [what became known as the Truman home on Delaware]. She just pestered the kids to death, because she wanted to keep track of every one of them. It's interesting. Then, the people across the street, Nellie and Ethel Noland, you see were kin of Harry, and he used to come and stay there when he got to be courting Bess.
JOHNSON: He brought over that cake tin, didn't he?
WALLACE: Oh yes, the cake.
JOHNSON: What have you heard about that? Did Bess ever tell you about that, that episode when he brought the cake tin over? Did she ever talk about that?
WALLACE: No.
JOHNSON: Was Frank Wallace married before you got married?
WALLACE: Yes, but not very much before [in 1915; George and May were married in 1916]].
JOHNSON: Then that left just Bess unmarried?
WALLACE: Yes.
JOHNSON: Do you think that Bess' mother really wanted to see her married?
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WALLACE: No, I don't think so. Mother Wallace was a selfish person, and she wanted to keep the kids all to herself. Mrs. Frank Wallace, that lived over here, came over to me one morning and she said, "I'm going to Kansas City." The streetcar ran to Kansas City. "I'm going to Kansas City, and I'm not going to do anything I shouldn't, but if I go, I'm going up Pleasant Street and get the car, because if I go through the door she'll want to know where I'm going and why." Well, she didn't bother me, and I loved her. She was a sweet person and awfully good to us.
JOHNSON: Who helped keep the house over there? Did she have a maid all the time?
WALLACE: Well, they always had colored help.
32 -- MGW giving gifts to her children.
JOHNSON: And crystal; look at that crystal.
WALLACE: And it's the devil to clean.
JOHNSON: I'll bet. But that's one of the Wallace family heirlooms? Do you think it originally was in the Gates family?
WALLACE: I suspect, but Mother Wallace gave it to me. And there was a whole bunch of these up in the attic. It must have been liquor things.
34 -- More gifts from MGW.
JOHNSON: This is kind of a Chinese pattern, and it's black, looks like black on white -- a china platter with Chinese scenes.
WALLACE: Yes. And these are old too. These were all Wallace things.
JOHNSON: Those are beautiful. That's got this really fine China painting on there.
WALLACE: Yes. Mother Wallace gave it to me. She kind of liked me.
JOHNSON: Oriental scenes. And that came from Mother Wallace.
WALLACE: From Mother Wallace, yes.
JOHNSON: From Bess' mother?
WALLACE: Yes.
JOHNSON: And when did she give that to you?
WALLACE: Oh, I don't remember.
36 -- More gifts from MGW.
JOHNSON: And here is what I call a settee or loveseat.
WALLACE: Mother Wallace gave us that for a wedding present to help our house, the settee.
JOHNSON: Yes, that's really pretty.
41-42 -- The Wallaces and the Trumans.
WALLACE: Well, now if you tell anybody I said this -- well, what shall I say, the Wallaces were very much impressed with their own importance.
JOHNSON: They were considered socialites, I suppose.
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WALLACE: Yes. Well, Mother Wallace didn't want Bess to get married in the first place. I think that was the point. And then you see, Harry went to the war and then he came back. But Harry was a sweet person. The Noland sisters lived across the street, you know, Miss Ethel and Nellie Noland. He would go over there and stay and then come over here.
JOHNSON: How well do you remember Harry Truman's mother?
WALLACE: Yes, very well. She was a grand old lady.
JOHNSON: Did she ever visit in the home? Do you ever remember her visiting in the home here next door, the Wallace-Gates home?
WALLACE: No, I don't know that she did.
JOHNSON: Or Mary Jane; do you ever remember her visiting there?
WALLACE: Yes.
JOHNSON: But they would not invite the Trumans over much then, your Grandmother Wallace would not ...
WALLACE: I don't know; I shouldn't even say it. I think the Wallaces, all of them were a little bit snooty, about their own things. I think they were just a little bit that way, but don't put that down on your paper; I'd get arrested and put in jail.
JOHNSON: We can erase it if we have to.
65-67 -- MGW's hobbies.
WALLACE: You see, when we were first married, for a number of years the grandmother and grandfather were still alive. So they really used the lower floor of the house. I mean they had the living room and dining room and all of the parlor. So, for Mother Wallace, they fixed up a room upstairs over the kitchen. She had her sewing machine in there and we'd go up there at night, and go up the back way and visit with her. Oh, that was about all; we just did like everybody else.
JOHNSON: Did she sew quite a bit? Did Bess' mother like to sew?
WALLACE: Yes, she liked to sew. I used to go up there. I didn't like her sewing machine; it was one of these automatic things. But she'd do the sewing if I'd tell her where to pin it and tell her where I wanted it; she'd do it.
JOHNSON: Did she do any embroidery?
WALLACE: I think Bess did some embroidery. I did some.
JOHNSON: Any crocheting?
WALLACE: Yes, oh, yes, I crocheted. And during the war we made things for the soldiers.
JOHNSON: You made doilies? Did you make doilies in those days for the furniture?
WALLACE: Well, some. Yes, I still have some. In the cedar chest I expect.
JOHNSON: Did Bess sew?
WALLACE: No, she didn't -- she wasn't much of a sewer.
JOHNSON: She didn't care for sewing, or cooking?
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WALLACE: Mother Wallace liked to sew, and Bess liked to read. She always had a book.
JOHNSON: She and Harry both liked to read.
WALLACE: And she liked to play tennis, and play golf, and play things outdoors. She was very active.
JOHNSON: Did her mother make any of her clothes for her? Was she good enough to make ...
WALLACE: I expect she did in the early days, because you couldn't just go out and buy anything you wanted, you know. By the time we were growing up, Mother Wallace had a funny machine. It was a funny little one that we had to let her use; I couldn't use it.
JOHNSON: Is that sewing machine still in the house?
WALLACE: I have no idea. It was up in that back room over the kitchen; that's where she sewed.
76 -- More gifts from MGW.
JOHNSON: And this love seat; we talked about it, didn't we?
WALLACE: Mother Wallace gave us that for a wedding present. It's been covered a time or two. I was married in 1916 so you know it's an antique.
JOHNSON: Was that in the family, or did she buy that new at the time? Do you have any idea?
WALLACE: It was newly bought.
JOHNSON: Okay, then it wasn't a family heirloom.
WALLACE: No.
78 -- HST situation at 219 North Delaware.
WALLACE: You know, I don't mean he wasn't welcome and that Mrs. Truman didn't love him and all, but I don't think he ever felt like it was his home, you know, because he was living with them. When they were first married, they went out to the farm, and they were going to stay there, and that's when Mother Wallace got so very ill that they had to come back and they never got away again.
JOHNSON: At least he didn't have to pay rent.
WALLACE: No, that's right. Well, he was a lot better off.
85-86 -- Life for the Trumans after MGW's death.
JOHNSON: After the Trumans came back, when he left the White House, then I suppose you visited quite a bit didn't you? With them living next door to you.
WALLACE: Oh, yes, we went back and forth. And [there was] Mother Wallace's death, of course. She was an old lady, but you're never ready to give up your mother.
JOHNSON: That's right. And so when they came back, of course, Mother Wallace wasn't with them. She died in 1952 in the White House. So they had the house to themselves, didn't they?
WALLACE: They brought the body back here.
JOHNSON: What did they do with her former bedroom, do you remember? Did they change it over into anything? Would you tell us about Mother Wallace's room?
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WALLACE: Oh yes, they put her downstairs later [in life, of course -- not after she was already dead]. You see the big room on that side belonged to Grandmother Gates.
JOHNSON: You're pointing to the left, to the south side of the house?
WALLACE: Yes. There is a big room there. Before Grandfather Gates died, Mother Wallace and the rest of them all slept upstairs, but after Grandmother and Grandfather Gates were both gone, why they fixed those rooms downstairs, which is now the parlor, and the room back of it.
Excerpt from attached copy of May Wallace's "life history." -- MGW's health and the Trumans decision to live with her.
Mother Wallace had a severe illness that summer making it necessary for Bess to come home, so 219 became home for the Trumans.
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Reathal Odum Oral History 1990

• Secretary in the office of Senator Harry S Truman, 1936-45; personal secretary to Mrs. Harry S Truman, 1945-53; including correspondence and other duties for Margaret Truman during concert tours, 1947-49; and in the years after 1952, secretary in the office of Senator Stuart Symington, secretary for the American Coke and Coal Chemicals Institute, and secretary to John W. Snyder. Interview by Neil M. Johnson.
• Never tending to verbosity, Ms. Odum still reveals a great deal more here than in her interview of 1988.
**47-50 -- Impressions of MGW.
JOHNSON: Bess Wallace's mother, did she ordinarily stay in the apartment when they were in Washington?
ODUM: Not in the early days; but later on she would come to Washington with Mrs. Truman during the session.
JOHNSON: When you babysat with Margaret was Mrs. Wallace there too?
ODUM: No, she wasn't there at that time; she still lived back here (Independence).
JOHNSON: Okay, but she at some time did come out and start staying in the apartment?
ODUM: Yes. Yes, she was there when they went up to Hyde Park, because otherwise why would I have had to stay there.
JOHNSON: She had become kind of a regular there, a member of the household so to speak?
ODUM: Yes. And then she moved to the Blair House with us, and she liked a certain little room there, we called the Glass Room. Mrs. Truman and I shared a little office on the fourth floor, but when they would be gone, I'd go down and chat with Mrs. Wallace and sit with her. I lived there a month with them.
JOHNSON: Now, what floor was she on in the Blair House?
ODUM: Let's see, I was on the fourth floor; the President and Mrs. Truman were on the second, so she and Margaret had rooms on the third floor. I can't quite recall how that worked out.
JOHNSON: When did you really first get acquainted with Bess Wallace's mother, Madge Gates Wallace?
ODUM: Well, I guess when she came to stay with them at the apartment. I don't remember the first time I ever met her.
JOHNSON: But you started getting pretty well acquainted with her on the 13th of April when you came over to Blair House?
ODUM: Yes. She accepted me, as someone who enjoyed being with her. We were across the hall from each other, when "we" moved from the Blair House to the White House.
JOHNSON: Do you remember her reactions at that point to her son-in-law becoming President?
ODUM: No, I really can't remember at that point. But later, when she and I would be together in her room at the White House, the President would put his head in the door to inquire as to her well-being, and she would hardly reply. She did say to me, on one occasion, that she did not approve of the changes being made at her home in Independence -- like the high fence being erected around the house, etc. She just didn't seem to understand the need for such changes.
JOHNSON: Did she ever talk politics, Madge Gates Wallace?
ODUM: Not to me. She would tell me, oh, about things in Independence. Mostly, when we were at Blair House, in the little glass room we talked about the beautiful glassware and the history of the Blair House. She liked to go out
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to a place called Mrs. Kaye's for lunch. It isn't on the edge of Washington now because it's all grown up out there. It was like going to the country, and she liked to drive out there. That was her special treat to those of us who accompanied her.
JOHNSON: Did she have a chauffeur then? If she wanted to go could she call somebody to chauffeur her out there? How did she get around?
ODUM: Yes, although she didn't have a special chauffeur, one of us would call for a car for her.
JOHNSON: One of the White House drivers?
ODUM: Yes, right. It was usually "Hardy," Mrs. Truman's driver. She liked him, and he was so kind to her.
JOHNSON: And you'd go along.
ODUM: Yes, she'd ask me. I will say she liked me because sometimes after we moved in the White House, and they'd want to be together, or eat as a family, she'd say to me, "Oh, you're going to eat with us aren't you?" I'd say, "No, I'm going out," or something, so as not to be underfoot all the time.
JOHNSON: But you did eat with them sometimes?
ODUM: Oh yes. I ate there most of the time, but this was a Thanksgiving when all the family was there, and she said, "Of course you're going to be with us." I said, "Oh, no, I think that's more just a family." I was always welcome back on Harvard Street.
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Truman in the White House: The Diary of Eben A. Ayers Robert Ferrell, ed. 1991

• Primary source with editor’s secondary commentary. Contains only casual references to MGW, but reveals again how much a part of the Trumans’ lives she was.
25: May 21, 1945, entry indicated some socializing between BWT’s & HST’s mothers
The president told us that yesterday he took his mother, his mother-in-law, Mrs. Truman, their daughter Margaret, and the secretary Miss Odum, for a ride on the Potomac aboard the yacht Potomac. They went out about 10:00 A. M. and returned about 3:00 P.M.
26: Ferrell’s remarks at to who was who in the above entry
[Mrs. David W. Wallace was the president’s mother-in-law. An invalid, she lived with the Trumans. His mother was returning to Grandview. “Home” meant the house at 219 North Delaware Street in Independence, owned by Mrs. Wallace, in which the Trumans had lived since their marriage in 1919, except when in Washington. Reathal Odum was secretary to Mrs. Truman.]
147: Entry of May 12, 1946, indicated MGW went to the presidential retreat
The president went with Mrs. Truman, Margaret, and Mrs. Truman’s mother, Mrs. David Wallace, to “Shangri-la” today. That is the retreat at Catoctin Mountain in Maryland, near Thurmont, which was fixed up for the late President Roosevelt during the war and to which he went on various occasions. It was the president’s first visit there. The party went up in the forenoon, had lunch there, and returned in the afternoon.
155: Ferrell’s remarks relating the family’s return to Independence to vote in 1946
[August 3, Saturday, the president left for Missouri in company of Mrs. Truamn, her mother, and several other Missourians to vote in the primary. He returned August 6, Tuesday.]
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Christine Wallace and David F. Wallace, Jr. Oral History 1991

• Wife and son of Fred Wallace, brother of Bess Truman. Interviewer Jim Williams.
• Other than Margaret Truman, Christine Wallace and her son David are the two most qualified people to describe the private personality of Madge Wallace. Keep in mind, however, that David was a child at the time of the events, and Christine was quite elderly at the time of this interview. Still, Christine’s candid remarks are quite revealing.
14-15 -- Christine Wallaces' first meeting with Madge Wallace.
WILLIAMS: Did you meet his [Fred’s] mother at that time?
C. WALLACE: Oh yes, she would be right there, but then she went and sat in the rocking chair in the living room because we played our little blackjack game on the dining room table. And Nancy and Bob [friends of Fred Wallace] had been out there before. They had known Fred a long time, and knew Mrs. Wallace too.
WILLIAMS: What was her reaction to your wedding?
C. WALLACE: I wasn't there to see it [when Fred told his mother he was getting married], so I don't know. I have no idea. But I think Grandmother Wallace was the kind of person that ... I don't know, she wouldn't show her feelings much. Do you think she did?
D. WALLACE: Everybody else thinks she did -- I mean, "the dragon lady."
C. WALLACE: Oh, I don't think that.
D. WALLACE: She sure said some negative things about Harry, you know.
C. WALLACE: Yeah, but Fred was her baby boy.
D. WALLACE: Yeah, but he never told you that she hit the ceiling or anything like that?
C. WALLACE: No, I don't think she did.
WILLIAMS: Did they wonder why he went out to California, why you couldn't wait to get back here?
C. WALLACE: Oh no, no, no, it was all ... It was nothing behind anybody's back. They were told just exactly --
D. WALLACE: Why didn't they come out for the wedding?
C. WALLACE: Well, people just didn't have that kind of money in those days.
22-23 -- Fred Wallace's relationship with his in-laws.
WILLIAMS: How did your husband get along with your parents through the years?
C. WALLACE: Well, they just kind of went each other's way.
WILLIAMS: I didn't hear you.
C. WALLACE: They kind of went their own way.
WILLIAMS: Which means they avoided each other?
C. WALLACE: No, but they didn't go out of their way to ... I don't know, how would you say, David?
D. WALLACE: I don't think they liked him very much, and I think you resented it and reacted accordingly.
WILLIAMS: Why wouldn't they like him?
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D. WALLACE: Martin Meier was born January 9, 1843, and died December 19, 1921. That's her paternal grandfather. Well, I don't know, I guess never good enough for their daughter, sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: Sounds like Madge Wallace and Harry Truman.
24-25 -- Madge Wallace's relationship with her son Fred.
C. WALLACE: My mother came to live with me for a while -- when were in Denver, not before then, of course. Then she spent some time with me, and then she'd spend some time with my brother in Dallas. Because Frank had gotten married, and he and his wife then went to California. They had twins, a boy and a girl, and my mother enjoyed them. And so my brother came and got her and took her to California, because she'd rather be with ... Well, like Fred was Mrs. Wallace's boy, Frank was my mother's boy. He could make her believe black was white and white was black. Don't you think so, David?
D. WALLACE: Mm-hmm. That isn't very specific but that's true.
26 -- What it was like living with mother-in-law Madge Wallace.
WILLIAMS: Did it matter to you that Bess's husband was a county judge, politician?
C. WALLACE: No, I didn't care. No, fine. I always liked Harry. He was always very nice.
WILLIAMS: Was that considered something of a celebrity back then?
C. WALLACE: Well, I wouldn't say "celebrity." Well, you didn't think he was out digging ditches or anything. You know what I mean? It was a pretty good job, wouldn't it be? And he was such a nice person.
WILLIAMS: Well, he was living with his mother-in-law, just like you ended up.
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Did you share that experience with him?
C. WALLACE: No, no, no, we never talked about our personal feelings with him. No, when he was there, we'd all have dinner together, and then sometimes Harry would sit down in the living room for a little while. But generally he went on upstairs to their room, and he'd read, and Bess would sit down ... and eventually she would go upstairs. Lots of times she'd just sit downstairs and read, too. We're a reading family, let me tell you. (chuckling)
28-30 -- MGW and David Willock Wallace's suicide.
WILLIAMS: How would you describe your mother-in-law?
C. WALLACE: She was always very kind and very nice, and tried to do everything on earth to make everybody happy. I don't know, I always felt kind of sorry for her.
WILLIAMS: Why?
C. WALLACE: Well, I think in many ways she was lonesome, and in many ways she was hurt by her experience. That's a hard thing to live down. Because I have been told that she was very extravagant, and I guess he had run up a lot of debts and so forth trying to meet the expenses. So basically, up to a point, she was a little bit responsible.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever hear anything about how David Willock Wallace died?
C. WALLACE: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Was that ever talked about?
C. WALLACE: No. No, it's --
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WILLIAMS: How did you find out?
C. WALLACE: I think Natalie told me. And even Margaret didn't know it for a long time. I don't know whether it's May or Natalie, and it's one of those books Margaret wrote, and I think it was the one called Bess [W. Truman], where she said that Bess found out that Natalie had told her. And it wasn't very well received. I don't know, that was something you kept locked up in a closet.
WILLIAMS: In one of the articles in the newspaper when he died --
C. WALLACE: I never saw them.
WILLIAMS: Well, it says that he had a disease that was creeping over him, and some people read that as if he had an alcohol problem.
C. WALLACE: He did.
WILLIAMS: So that was one of the problems?
C. WALLACE: He had that, and then he had ... Oh, he had terrible debts, and I think Grandfather Gates had loaned him money after ... time and time again. Of course, how much of some of this you read now -- whether Grandmother was extravagant or what -- I don't know, but he had a house to maintain, a wife. By that time they had one, two, three, four children. Even those days that cost money. And I don't know. And of course Fred doesn't even remember his father, never did, so ...
WILLIAMS: But you eventually found out these things?
C. WALLACE: Well, Natalie had told me. Natalie told me.
WILLIAMS: Was it quite a while after you had been in the family?
C. WALLACE: Yeah, quite a while. Yeah, but it never occurred to me to ask or anything. I mean, it was one of those things.
WILLIAMS: And you didn't know the Gates family, George P. and Elizabeth?
C. WALLACE: No. I never knew anybody at all, and I met Fred and I knew none of his background or anything. And gradually you meet them and ...
WILLIAMS: Did Madge talk about her parents?
C. WALLACE: She never did to me, no.
WILLIAMS: She wouldn't make references to them about ... in the house?
C. WALLACE: No. No, not that I remember.
WILLIAMS: Where did you hear some of these stories about them and what the house had been like when it was built?
C. WALLACE: Well, mostly from Natalie or May, yeah. And somebody told me then, or maybe I read it, that the house had been built when Grandmother Wallace was four years old, but .... And then it was remodeled. Now that, I don't know when that was done. And I do know they lived down the street -- just hearsay, you know.
35-36 -- MGW's recreational habits.
D. WALLACE: You certainly had enough help around the house.
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C. WALLACE: Having babies?
D. WALLACE: No, I mean, there were people all over the house.
WILLIAMS: To baby-sit.
C. WALLACE: I know, but you just kind of hated to ask them to. Grandmother was always glad to. But she would go to Platte City.
WILLIAMS: Madge would?
C. WALLACE: Oh yeah, that's her sister. That was a little different then, just .... Well, it was just different. She'd go do that, or take a ride with Frank and Natalie or George and May, but that was about it. But she wouldn't ... oh, like ... well, I don't think she ever went to a movie in her life.
D. WALLACE: Well, at the White House.
C. WALLACE: Yeah, that's right.
D. WALLACE: She went downstairs to the movie there. She didn't go out to movies there either.
52-55 -- The former possibility of Fred & Christine Wallace building a house in the back yard.
WILLIAMS: Why did George and Frank build houses right next door there?
C. WALLACE: Because their Grandfather Gates gave them the land.
WILLIAMS: Was that a device to keep them nearby?
C. WALLACE: Well, I don't know, I wasn't around then. But I know they were given the ground and the house, I think, and I know Mrs. Wallace always said, "Well, Fred, I think you should build a house." I don't know where we would have built it if we had built it, in the back yard or out on the side or what. It's just as well we didn't.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever feel slighted that you didn't have a house of your own?
C. WALLACE: No. Well, I always wished I had a house of my own, but not at that location. It was a little close, but .... Of course, it would have been nice now, wouldn't it?
D. WALLACE: I don't know, if you want to live in Independence.
WILLIAMS: You'd have the government trying to buy your house.
C. WALLACE: I know, I was thinking about that. I always thought if I had to have one .... Well, Grandmother was always going to put us over where the pergola was; then we might be right by the driveway. But I used to ... you know how you think about things in the middle of the night? I thought, Well, maybe it would be better between the house and the alley, right close to the alley. But then I couldn't figure out what they'd do about the fence. (chuckling) See, they take the fence right up to the house, and they take the fence here, but what's going to keep people from jumping over the roof and down into the yard?
D. WALLACE: There wasn't a fence then.
C. WALLACE: Well, this is in later years when there was a fence. I kept thinking, Gee, it's just as well we didn't build.
WILLIAMS: So you wanted a house near where the Secret Service built their little hut?
C. WALLACE: I never thought about going down there by the barn.
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WILLIAMS: Oh, you were further ...
C. WALLACE: I was up across from the --
WILLIAMS: Toward Delaware.
C. WALLACE: Geez, I'm all turned around. Right here, next to the Allens, and then a house, and then the alley.
WILLIAMS: Oh, okay, I see.
C. WALLACE: I was going to use the alley as my driveway, but they wouldn't let me, probably. Do you ever do that, sit and think of all those silly things that maybe could have been?
D. WALLACE: Well, I would have thought about it in the 1930s, but I wouldn't have thought about it now.
C. WALLACE: Well, they sometimes need some things to think about.
WILLIAMS: So the topic did come up of you maybe building a house nearby?
C. WALLACE: Grandmother Wallace would every now and then say something about it.
WILLIAMS: Was she going to give you money to do it?
C. WALLACE: She was going to give us the ground.
WILLIAMS: Which is probably about all she had to give.
C. WILLIAMS: Yeah, she didn't have any money. It took all of what she had, I guess, just keeping everything going.
D. WALLACE: So why didn't you do it?
C. WALLACE: Why didn't I do it?
D. WALLACE: Yeah.
C. WALLACE: Well, in those days I didn't want to be that close to my mother-in-law.
D. WALLACE: No, but you already gave up the option of living in California to go back to Missouri. You know what I mean?
60-63 -- The care of MGW during the Trumans' time in Washington.
WILLIAMS: So you moved in not too long before the Trumans moved to Washington for the first time. And half of the year they were gone --
D. WALLACE: Not long after. Not long after, yeah.
WILLIAMS: They wouldn't have moved until the end of '34, right?
D. WALLACE: Yeah. Well, he would have been sworn in January of '35.
WILLIAMS: So you were there with Mrs. Wallace for about half of the year, just you and your family with her.
C. WALLACE: Mm-hmm.
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WILLIAMS: Would she ever go to Washington to live with them?
C. WALLACE: Not at that time she didn't. She had her own home.
WILLIAMS: So she would stay there year round.
C. WALLACE: Yeah, that's what she wanted to do. And there was one time that .... Where had we gone? I think we had our own place somewhere. And they left, and Grandmother Wallace couldn't stay in that house by herself. And she went down here on Maple --
WILLIAMS: To the apartments?
C. WALLACE: To the apartments, and had an apartment. And I think they all kind of glared at me every time because I didn't have her come live with me. But she did come to Denver a couple of times and stay with us.
D. WALLACE: Well, that's later.
C. WALLACE: Because you remember that house we had at 1200 East Third?
D. WALLACE: Yeah, I remember it. This is much later than we're talking here.
C. WALLACE: Yeah, but there was a half-bath down there, and then there was sort of like a room like that. We put Grandmother in there because she couldn't go up the steps.
WILLIAMS: So did you live in the Wallace home from '34 to '42 straight, or was there a time when you moved out and then came back?
C. WALLACE: If it was about eight years, it would be straight.
D. WALLACE: Well, she was out for about .... How long did you live in Kansas City with your parents?
C. WALLACE: Oh, about six months.
D. WALLACE: Yeah, except for about six months.
WILLIAMS: In that period? And is that when Mrs. Wallace would have had to go to the apartments?
C. WALLACE: No. No, that was later.
D. WALLACE: That's after you went to Denver.
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: And they thought that you should have taken care of her.
C. WALLACE: I was supposed to --
D. WALLACE: She could have gone to Washington.
C. WALLACE: I think I was supposed to have moved in here and stayed there, just like Bess did, forever.
WILLIAMS: When Bess was gone, did you assume that role of taking care of Mrs. Wallace?
C. WALLACE: She didn't need any care; she just needed somebody in the house. I think she took care of herself pretty well. She had that bedroom and bath downstairs there off the living room, and then every fall Fred would
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get.... She'd buy a lot of Floor-lac, and Fred would get the paintbrush and paint all the floors. We didn't have carpeting on the floor at that time.
D. WALLACE: Every fall? Every fall? He painted it every fall?
C. WALLACE: Well, wherever Grandmother wanted him. I remember doing it --
65-66 -- Who was in charge of the household.
WILLIAMS: Who made the decisions around the house?
C. WALLACE: I think it was discussed between Mrs. Truman and her mother. I don't know. Well, we never had any. What would we have? You mean, "What should we have for dinner?" or something like that?
WILLIAMS: Well, that, and like, "Should we repair the roof?" or "Should we paint the house?"
C. WALLACE: Oh, that was between Mrs. Wallace and Bess; and as far as food, I think Grandmother always did it. And one thing she always did is, in those days, Catholics had to eat fish on Friday, and she'd always have fish on Friday and then a little meat for the non-fish-eaters. (chuckling) She was very good about that. I mean, she took care of things well.
WILLIAMS: You were talking in the car earlier about sharing the bills.
C. WALLACE: That was between Fred and his mother, and I never got involved in it.
D. WALLACE: He never said how much he gave her?
C. WALLACE: No, and I never asked him.
74 -- MGW and her grandchildren.
WILLIAMS: Was this the first grandchild for your parents?
C. WALLACE: Yes, the first.
WILLIAMS: So I expect they were pleased?
C. WALLACE: They were delighted. They would like to have kept him.
WILLIAMS: But it wasn't Madge's first.
C. WALLACE: No, Margaret was her first.
WILLIAMS: Did she have any particular reaction when you moved in with a young baby?
C. WALLACE: You mean Mrs. Wallace?
WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm.
C. WALLACE: She was delighted. Oh, she thought, The more the merrier. No, she liked it. There's a cute picture I have of Grandmother Wallace sitting on the back porch holding you.
D. WALLACE: Where is that?
C. WALLACE: Hmm?
D. WALLACE: Where?
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C. WALLACE: Well, I guess in your baby book. (chuckling) I don't know.
85 -- MGW in Denver.
D. WALLACE: Now, backing up a little bit, but that's the house that Grandmother would come out and spend the whole summer with ... starting .... That was at 411 Williams Street, and then later at 1200 East Third Street.
WILLIAMS: So, when you first moved to Denver it was 411?
C. WALLACE: Yeah, we were in a hotel.
87-88 -- The death of the Fred and Christine's twins.
C. WALLACE: It doesn't make any difference. They both passed away about the first day. I never saw them. They were named -- they had to be named. It was Margaret Ann and Charles Gates.
WILLIAMS: Family names.
C. WALLACE: Yeah. It doesn't make any difference .... And they're out at Mount Olivet (?). They have a plot out there called "Plot of the Angels" where they put babies like that.
WILLIAMS: Do you know what day that was in November?
C. WALLACE: November ... around the 4th. It's in the back in Grandmother's handwriting here in the ...
D. WALLACE: There?
C. WALLACE: No, no, no. There. Now what is that, if you can read that? I think it's November 4, 1944.
WILLIAMS: You said it was election day, or close to it?
C. WALLACE: I remember this .... I don't know whether it was that day or whether I was still in the hospital or what, but I remember this friend of Fred's bringing me this ballot and saying, "Put your X here." (chuckling)
WILLIAMS: Who did you vote for, for President?
C. WALLACE: I don't even remember.
D. WALLACE: You don't even know? She had a baby every time he ran for something new. She had me in '34, she had the twins in '44, which was vice president, forget Marion, and she had Margo in '48. So there.
WILLIAMS: So what's Margo's full name?
D. WALLACE: It's the same as the silverware.
C. WALLACE: Charlotte Margaret Wallace.
WILLIAMS: Charlotte Margaret. How did you get Margo?
C. WALLACE: I have Charlotte from my father, whose name was Charles, Margaret ... Charlotte Margaret. Margaret for Mrs. Wallace, whose name Madge is really Margaret.
89 -- The Wallaces' visits to Washington.
D. WALLACE: I was trying to say, considering, you know, living under one house with all this crowd for eight years, I mean, people go mad.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever visit Washington when Mr. Truman was senator?
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C. WALLACE: Yeah.
D. WALLACE: Not much.
C. WALLACE: Fred and I came --
D. WALLACE: No, but I never did.
C. WALLACE: No, you didn't. No, Fred had to go to Washington for something, and so they decided that I should go with him. And Grandmother Wallace said, "Now don't worry, I'll take care of the children. There's plenty of people here to look after them. Now you go." So we had a funny little old Ford, and we rattled along.
96-97 -- MGW and political visitors to 219 North Delaware.
C. WALLACE: Yeah, so I have a little antique chair that was Grandmother's Wallace's, and she had it there in the parlor or music room or whatever you want to call it.
D. WALLACE: Which was always called the parlor, by the way.
C. WALLACE: Parlor. It was the only time I ever saw Grandmother get mad. She said, "If those big, fat politicians would stop coming in. They always pick that chair to sit on!" (chuckling) It made her furious.
WILLIAMS: So they would come to the house?
C. WALLACE: Once in a while. Once in a while.
WILLIAMS: Did he try to avoid that?
C. WALLACE: Yes, anything to keep peace. (chuckling)
WILLIAMS: So that did bother her?
C. WALLACE: That's the only time I heard her. But it was such a pretty, fragile chair. (chuckling) And isn't that funny? Why do great big, fat people always pick the wrong kind of chair to sit on?
WILLIAMS: Is that where, when people came to visit, would they be in the parlor?
C. WALLACE: Yeah, because they'd talk politics. And Grandmother was always in the living room, and that was her room and her chair, so naturally Harry would come in and they'd go that-a-way.
WILLIAMS: Would she use the living room because her bedroom was right next to it?
C. WALLACE: I think so. I think that was it. And after all, it was her house and where else would she sit?
WILLIAMS: Was she always in that first-floor bedroom, as long as you were there?
C. WALLACE: As far as I know.
WILLIAMS: Did you ever hear where her room was before that?
C. WALLACE: No. No, I don't know.
102-103 -- Madge Wallace, cooking, and manners.
WILLIAMS: Who did the cooking when she [Vietta] quit?
C. WALLACE: When did she quit?
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D. WALLACE: You remember, like about '38 or '39.
WILLIAMS: Then she came back, right?
D. WALLACE: Yeah.
C. WALLACE: I don't know. I guess Grandmother Wallace could cook.
D. WALLACE: Yeah, she did it.
C. WALLACE: Bess could cook. Chris? No, she couldn't.
D. WALLACE: No, that's what happened. I think then everybody just pitched in then.
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
D. WALLACE: No, she got mad because ... she got mad.
C. WALLACE: I always had to set the table.
D. WALLACE: And I don't blame her. I don't know how she stood it.
C. WALLACE: And I always said, "Well, Grandmother, I don't see any sense to put butter plates on." "Christine, do you want your children to go out someplace and ask somebody what that plate's for?" (chuckling) "Put them on." Oh, she was very proper.
108-109 -- Madge Wallace and sewing.
WILLIAMS: And you didn't sew much?
C. WALLACE: No. Grandmother Wallace. Everybody brought something to Grandmother Wallace to sew. She always did. But she said that when she was raising her children she had to make all her children's little undershirts and everything. God, it's just as well I didn't live then; the kids would go naked. (chuckling)
D. WALLACE: So she made all that stuff? She didn't use a sewing machine.
C. WALLACE: No, she did them by hand. Well, maybe she did, David, before we got there.
WILLIAMS: But you said she did have an antique sewing machine?
C. WALLACE: Yeah, a treadle, and she gave it to me and I --
D. WALLACE: It was out on the vestibule.
111 -- Decorating the house.
WILLIAMS: Did Mrs. Wallace like to keep the house as a dark, Victorian house?
C. WALLACE: She never said.
WILLIAMS: Did she redecorate much?
C. WALLACE: No.
WILLIAMS: Getting wallpaper or drapes?
C. WALLACE: No, I don't ever remember doing it.
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119 -- Christmas trees.
C. WALLACE: Well, a friend of Fred's crated it, and it was a big thing in the backyard. It looked like a ... what shall I say? Like an oil well standing there, you know, like this? (chuckling) But it was a beautiful tree, and that's the one that marked the ceiling and upset Grandmother. That's the only thing ... one of the only things that really bothered her. She didn't like that big black mark up on the ceiling.
124-125 -- MGW and the Williamsburg
WILLIAMS: I think you said at lunchtime that Madge Wallace would go out on the Williamsburg?
C. WALLACE: Yeah, she went on it. There's pictures. Don't you have those pictures where we're all standing on the Williamsburg and --
D. WALLACE: On the fantail.
C. WALLACE: And Grandmother right there in front?
WILLIAMS: Do you know why she liked that enough to go out when she otherwise --
C. WALLACE: Because she was just with her family and no other people -- outsiders -- I guess. Wouldn't you think so? I think that's ...
WILLIAMS: And nobody could see her?
C. WALLACE: No, I don't think she cared about people seeing her. It's just that ... I don't know.
127-128 -- Denver.
WILLIAMS: After you moved to Denver, how much would you see the Trumans? You said every Christmas.
C. WALLACE: Every Christmas, yeah.
WILLIAMS: Was that about it?
C. WALLACE: I think so. They were so busy, and it takes --
D. WALLACE: Well, I was here all summer.
C. WALLACE: And it takes money to travel, and we didn't have that kind of money, and --
D. WALLACE: No, but she would bring Grandmother out and stay.
C. WALLACE: Yeah, she'd bring Grandmother out, and we always corresponded.
D. WALLACE: They'd sort of Grandmother with us while they went back then, you know, or something during ... I don't understand that.
C. WALLACE: And we always wrote back and forth and so forth.
D. WALLACE: It would be fall that they'd spring for her .
WILLIAMS: Well, it's funny you should mention that, because I have an article from the Littleton Independent.
D. WALLACE: Wonderful.
WILLIAMS: In Arapaho County, Colorado. July 18, 1947, (reading) "Mrs. Harry S. Truman is pictured here with members of her family after arriving at the Littleton Depot aboard the Colorado Eagle. From left to right are: Mrs. David Frank Wallace, her sister-in-law; Mrs. D. W. Wallace, Mrs. Truman's mother; David Frank Wallace, her
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brother; David Wallace, her nephew; her niece, Marion Wallace; Mrs. Truman; and Miss Virginia Ann Marshall, Independent reporter." And it says, "First Lady of land is 'just plain Aunt Bess' to niece and nephew."
C. WALLACE: They sure got the names wrong, didn't they?
129 -- MGW helping with household chores in Denver.
WILLIAMS: What would they do when they came out? What would Mrs. Wallace do?
D. WALLACE: I said that Eagle was the best in the country then. It still is.
C. WALLACE: Well, she'd pitch in and she'd do everything. She'd cook or she'd wash dishes -- anything to help.
WILLIAMS: Well, she was in her nineties at this time?
C. WALLACE: Oh, Grandmother Wallace? I thought you meant Bess.
D. WALLACE: Yeah, close to it, though. She died at ninety-two, wasn't it, or ninety what? So she was eighty-eight or eighty-nine here.
WILLIAMS: Was she still pretty spry?
C. WALLACE: She looks pretty good, doesn't she?
D. WALLACE: Yeah, pretty good.
C. WALLACE: Oh, she'd sit and she'd read to the kids. She was good at reading to the children. I don't know, it was nice having her.
131 -- News article on MGW.
WILLIAMS: Is there anything of interest in that article?
D. WALLACE: (reading) "Mrs. D. W. Wallace of Grandview, Missouri ..."
WILLIAMS: (chuckling) Obviously, that reporter there got her ...
D. WALLACE: She didn't have much of a future, did she, in reporting?
**139-147 -- Living with MGW and her relationship with HST.
WILLIAMS: When Madge Wallace died, this is one of her obituaries. I'd like to see if you agree with what they say. (reading) "When Elizabeth Wallace was married to Harry Truman, Mrs. Wallace's sons already had established homes of their own. One of the conditions of the marriage was that the young couple live with her in the family home." Did you ever here that?
C. WALLACE: Well, I assume probably there was something more to it than met the eye.
WILLIAMS: (reading) "Mrs. Wallace gave hardy --"
D. WALLACE: Well, I think, for one reason, he didn't have a job, did he, when they got married?
C. WALLACE: Not at first.
D. WALLACE: So I don't know whether it was a condition that was laid on from the outset, or a condition of necessity. I would suspect it was a condition of necessity, or desire and necessity met right in the middle.
C. WALLACE: I think a lot of it was necessity, because you read some of those books and it was Harry trying to find a job and how much he would make and --
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D. WALLACE: Well, there was the haberdasher, the oil business, and all that junk going on for years, and there just wasn't any money. I mean, there wasn't any other place to live. So I suspect it might have been, "Oh, isn't it wonderful you're going to be able to live with us." When Bess said, "We're going to get married, but he doesn't have a job, he just got back" -- you know, da, da, da, da. I don't think it was a condition, ipso, you know. What did Margaret say about that? I don't think it was a specific, "You live here or you don't get married." I don't think it was that.
WILLIAMS: Then it says, "Mrs. Wallace gave hearty approval to her new son-in-law." See, we hear all these stories that they didn't get along.
C. WALLACE: Who, Grandmother and Harry? Well, if they didn't get along, they sure covered it up well. I mean, of course you felt like there was a little iciness maybe between them, but Harry was always a perfect gentleman. And I remember after dinner he would say ... talk a little bit and then go on up. And it was always "Harry," and he called her "Mrs. Wallace."
D. WALLACE: Well, it couldn't have been easy for him living in his mother-in-law's house, either.
C. WALLACE: I think it was darn hard on Harry.
D. WALLACE: Yeah, and I'm sure he wouldn't have done it if he could have financially gone somewhere else. It was a hell of a nice ... you know, way of living inexpensively.
WILLIAMS: Were there ever disputes, that you know of?
C. WALLACE: If there were, I never heard one of them. And you can't tell me that Harry and Bess didn't have a few fights. Don't you think it's normal?
D. WALLACE: Well, yeah.
C. WALLACE: But it was always quiet. It was done up in their room. You never heard any shouting. The only time I heard Bess shout at anybody was at Margaret because she was trying to cheat at croquet. (chuckling) And she sent her to bed, and you never heard such a racket in your life as the way she screamed and cried. That was Margaret that screamed and cried.
WILLIAMS: How do you cheat at croquet?
C. WALLACE: I don't know, I don't play croquet. But she was really ... And isn't it funny how you remember those things? But boy, did Margaret ever put on a show. Now, that's the only time I ever heard any dispute between any of them.
WILLIAMS: Why wouldn't Mrs. Wallace like Harry Truman? What was there not to like about him?
C. WALLACE: I really don't think Mrs. Wallace would have liked anybody to marry Bess. I think she was perfectly satisfied having somebody live in that house and take over the responsibility.
D. WALLACE: Yeah, I don't think it was the poor farm boy thing at all because, I mean, that was sort of in the past then. He'd just come through the war and everything.
C. WALLACE: I think it's because she got Bess to run ...
D. WALLACE: Yeah, got her to do all the work.
C. WALLACE: And look after the kids. You've read those stories.
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D. WALLACE: No, I think she was terrified that Bess would get married and disappear. So there may have been that, you know, "Can you please live here for awhile and see how it goes?" And then, you see, as a semi-condition. That's exactly probably what happened.
C. WALLACE: But I think, really, it's because she wanted somebody to help take the responsibility.
WILLIAMS: What would have happened if they had moved out?
C. WALLACE: I don't know.
WILLIAMS: Could Mrs. Wallace have taken care of the house? Or survive?
C. WALLACE: I don't know. I did not know Mrs. Wallace --
D. WALLACE: I think there would have been a lot of pressure on Frank and Natalie then. Frank would have been the next closest one.
C. WALLACE: And I think, of course, at that time her parents were alive, so that was a houseful even in those days. There would be her parents and --
D. WALLACE: They weren't alive in 1919.
WILLIAMS: Mrs. Gates was alive.
D. WALLACE: She was? So she was there, too?
C. WALLACE: Anyway, it was a full house. She moved up there after her husband died, and it was Madge Wallace and the four children -- there was five people -- and then her parents, five, six, seven. There were seven in the house then. Now, if there were any brothers ... I think there was a brother living there, Madge's brother. I don't know, maybe seven, eight people living there. That's a houseful of people. But Mrs. Wallace was a young woman then, too. That makes a difference.
WILLIAMS: What did your husband think of his mother? How was their relationship? I know how you --
D. WALLACE: He wrote a letter every day. Every day.
C. WALLACE: He was mama's boy.
WILLIAMS: So he reciprocated her feelings?
C. WALLACE: Yeah. And then they took a trip back East and he took her along. He had a car -- he had a Packard -- and they went back to see some kinfolks back East, and I don't know where they were. Read that book. Margaret tells about it. There's a lot of information in that book.
D. WALLACE: And just where do you think a twelve-cylinder convertible was coming from?
WILLIAMS: Her?
D. WALLACE: Of course. When he was in school? You know, and they were out working at a job, Frank and George.
C. WALLACE: It didn't sit very good, I don't think.
WILLIAMS: That she favored Fred?
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D. WALLACE: Very much the spoiled son. But of the others, I think Frank was closer to her than George, don't you?
C. WALLACE: Yeah. Frank would always come up after work.
D. WALLACE: That's why I said, had the whole Truman thing blown up, I think that she would have lived with them, you know.
C. WALLACE: Oh yeah, but there were a couple remarks about Natalie.
D. WALLACE: Natalie, I don't think, would have it. That's the other thing.
C. WALLACE: Because Natalie was walking around ... Instead of going one way, she went all the way around the block, and somebody saw her and said, "What in the world are you doing?" She said, "Well, I just get tired of going by that house and having somebody say, 'Where are you going, Natalie? What are you going to do, Natalie?'"
WILLIAMS: Was that Mrs. Wallace?
D. WALLACE: Mm-hmm.
WILLIAMS: She'd do that to you?
C. WALLACE: No, all of us, but --
D. WALLACE: She did it to all of us. She did it to me when I was here in the summers: "Where are you going? How long are you going to be?" You know, and there was always this insecurity about it. It was like my dog: Was he going to come back, you know?
C. WALLACE: But you get sort of ... you live with it.
WILLIAMS: It never got on your nerves too much?
C. WALLACE: A little bit, yeah. If Fred and I had any fights, it was because I'd get so damn sick of living here (lowers her voice) with their mother.
D. WALLACE: That's okay, you can say it.
WILLIAMS: She's long gone.
C. WALLACE: I know, but it doesn't sound very nice.
D. WALLACE: No, but it couldn't be otherwise. How could it be otherwise?
WILLIAMS: I think people really relate to that. When they come in and we say Harry Truman lived with his mother-in-law for thirty-three years, and they say ...
C. WALLACE: My lord, how did he stand it?
D. WALLACE: Good God!
WILLIAMS: He was a saint.
C. WALLACE: Well, he was practically.
D. WALLACE: Well, actually I think he probably handled the living there better than anybody else, I just have a funny feeling.
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C. WALLACE: Because he just went upstairs and read.
D. WALLACE: Because two sons wouldn't. Frank and George wouldn't -- didn't. Their wives wouldn't let them. And so, to that extent, I think that was part of Harry's compromise there. And I think, you know, Dad wouldn't think of living anywhere else when he needed a financial base, a place to live inexpensively.
WILLIAMS: So you didn't move to Denver to flee her?
D. WALLACE: Oh no.
C. WALLACE: No, we moved to Denver because he had a job that sent him to Denver.
D. WALLACE: But it was good.
C. WALLACE: But I was kind of happy to get out from under.
D. WALLACE: Yeah, I think it was the best possible thing, but I think it was too late for him.
C. WALLACE: I think eventually we would have exploded.
WILLIAMS: When you first look at it, the three children were there, and then the fourth one moves off, and it kind of looks like --
C. WALLACE: The only thing that used to drive me crazy, if this kid would scream and yell and cry ...
D. WALLACE: She would start throwing a fit.
C. WALLACE: She'd call up to me and she'd say, "Christine, is there anything I can do to help?" (chuckling) And you'd think ...
D. WALLACE: She was always doing that, and it was driving people mad.
C. WALLACE: I don't know why it is.
D. WALLACE: Well, Margaret, too. I think she drove Aunt B absolutely wild. Because the minute Margaret would cry or something, Grandmother would come to her defense: "Poor little Margaret. Poor little Margy."
WILLIAMS: "What did you do to her?"
D. WALLACE: She did the same thing with me: "Poor little David." You know, a little less with Marion, .
C. WALLACE: And "What can I do to help?"
D. WALLACE: "What can I do?" because she was always there, Miss Solicitation, and I think it probably drove Bess and Mother absolutely mad. And Harry just went out of the room and slammed the door and read, you know.
C. WALLACE: But that is the one thing that I --
WILLIAMS: Did she think that you were doing something wrong when they cried?
C. WALLACE: Who knows? Who knows?
D. WALLACE: No, I don't think that, but I think she just wanted everything to be --
C. WALLACE: Peaceful and quiet and happy.
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D. WALLACE: Peaceful and quiet and happy.
C. WALLACE: Well, with kids you don't have it always peaceful. You'd think that we'd been beating the devil out of your kid, and all they were doing was crying because they didn't want to go to bed. You know, don't you?
D. WALLACE: Mother, you don't need to defend it.
149-151 -- The proper MGW.
C. WALLACE: A little black velvet ribbon right around here. You know how they did, you see pictures of ...
WILLIAMS: Here's her picture.
C. WALLACE: Yeah, look.
D. WALLACE: Well, that's only her. never wore it.
WILLIAMS: With the cameo.
C. WALLACE: See there?
D. WALLACE: Yeah, I know.
WILLIAMS: And it says in the next sentence, "She wore black velvet bands around her neck, and prided herself on her erect carriage."
C. WALLACE: Yeah, she was very erect.
WILLIAMS: (reading) "She believed a woman's place was in the home, but she had many outside charitable interests."
C. WALLACE: What?
WILLIAMS: (reading) "She didn't care much for politics, although her husband was county treasurer at one time."
C. WALLACE: What were her outside interests?
WILLIAMS: (chuckling) I don't know. (reading) "She liked to keep busy in her home. She had no time for idle gossip."
D. WALLACE: I think that's about all that made the house go around, actually.
WILLIAMS: Was the idle gossip?
D. WALLACE: Was talking about everybody, yeah.
WILLIAMS: Or the town go around?
D. WALLACE: Yeah.
C. WALLACE: We didn't talk about each other much.
D. WALLACE: I can't believe that.
WILLIAMS: (reading) "She was an excellent housekeeper, and she reared Mrs. Truman to be capable of cooking a meal with ease. And she saw to it that Margaret had the same training."
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D. WALLACE: Oh, sure. Margaret can't even boil an egg.
WILLIAMS: (reading) "Musical herself, she encouraged Margaret's aspirations to be a singer."
D. WALLACE: Oh, I'm sure she did.
C. WALLACE: Oh, she fought it every inch of the way.
D. WALLACE: No, she didn't, did she?
C. WALLACE: Oh, she thought a woman didn't go on the stage, not a good woman.
WILLIAMS: (reading) "When Margaret sang on her first concert tour at Constitution Hall in Washington, Mrs. Wallace went."
C. WALLACE: I didn't know that.
WILLIAMS: (reading) "It was one of her few public appearances in recent years. That night she sat in the Presidential box proudly wearing three white gardenia corsages, one from her son-in-law, one from her daughter, and the other from Margaret. Mrs. Wallace is a member of the Trinity Episcopal Church. She had few other interests outside the home." Well, they just said she had all these charities.
C. WALLACE: Yeah, how about those?
WILLIAMS: (reading) "Her family and its activities were her hobby."
D. WALLACE: That's it. That's very accurate.
C. WALLACE: Oh yeah, we were a hobby all right.
160-163 -- MGW's funeral.
WILLIAMS: What other occasions did you come back after the presidency?
C. WALLACE: Well, we came back --
D. WALLACE: Well, when I was driving across the country or something like that, I'd stop off and see Aunt Bess.
C. WALLACE: Well, we came for Grandmother Wallace's funeral. She had it at the house.
D. WALLACE: I didn't.
C. WALLACE: Well, I did.
D. WALLACE: So you did then, huh?
C. WALLACE: And I had Margo upstairs.
D. WALLACE: That was before the Christmas thing then.
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
D. WALLACE: So you came back and then went back to Denver-Albuquerque, it was Albuquerque there -- and then went to ... three weeks later.
C. WALLACE: Well, who took care of you then while I was gone?
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D. WALLACE: I don't know. Why would I need anybody to take care of me?
C. WALLACE: Well, you and Marion --
D. WALLACE: At eighteen.
WILLIAMS: It was '52.
D. WALLACE: Yeah, December 2nd in '52.
WILLIAMS: Was the house decorated or full of flowers?
C. WALLACE: For her funeral? They had the coffin in where the piano room is -- the parlor -- I call it parlor -- in front of the fireplace.
WILLIAMS: Parallel to the fireplace?
C. WALLACE: Here's the fireplace. It went right like that. Then, in the living room, from where the secretary was out -- Isn't there a post or something?
D. WALLACE: Yeah, in the corner.
C. WALLACE: They had chairs.
WILLIAMS: In the foyer, scattered?
D. WALLACE: The hall.
C. WALLACE: No, straight.
D. WALLACE: In the hall.
C. WALLACE: Straight. In the hall, right through the living room.
WILLIAMS: It's not the foyer?
D. WALLACE: No, you've got to speak the language that everybody understands. That's the parlor, that's the den, that's the living room, that's the hall.
C. WALLACE: I mean, starting with the hall and going through the living room, they were like this. You understand, don't you?
WILLIAMS: Rows of chairs.
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: How many people were there?
C. WALLACE: I don't remember. Not many.
WILLIAMS: And the body was laid out there overnight, or ... ?
C. WALLACE: Well, it was there. I think they just brought it for the funeral from the --
WILLIAMS: Why wasn't it at a funeral parlor or a church?
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C. WALLACE: You know, I have often wondered that, but I think Bess --
D. WALLACE: Well, I think because of all hoo-ha.
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
D. WALLACE: Was Uncle Harry back for it? I'm sure he would have been.
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: He was President still, just barely.
D. WALLACE: Yeah.
C. WALLACE: But all I can remember is her laying out there, and Bess going through there, and she and Fred were standing there and they were really quite upset, both of them.
D. WALLACE: Well, sure.
WILLIAMS: Because they were the two that were closest?
C. WALLACE: Yeah. No, it's just ... I don't know, it was sad.
D. WALLACE: Well, I think it was an end of an era, in more than the usual sense. Because I mean they were all very ... I mean, it was fanaticism, nearly.
171-172 -- Similarities and differences between BWT and MGW.
WILLIAMS: You really haven't described Bess as a sister-in-law.
C. WALLACE: Perfect. I think she was.
D. WALLACE: Well, she was an amazing person.
C. WALLACE: She was an amazing person. I was very, very fond of her, and she couldn't do enough for anybody. She did as much as she could. And that was not enough to suit her, I guess. I think she was a ... I don't know, I was very fond of her. That's all I can say. She was so good to everybody.
WILLIAMS: Did she take after her mother that way, or just --
D. WALLACE: I think so, but in a more practical way. Because Grandmother was anything but practical, and Bess was very practical and down-to-earth. And I think that that's the main difference. But their personalities were very similar.
WILLIAMS: Would it be safe to say that her hobby was her family, just like they said about Madge Wallace?
D. WALLACE: Well, in later years certainly. I think her hobby was more her husband than her family.
174 -- HST as a relative as compared to MGW.
WILLIAMS: You haven't described your Uncle Harry as an uncle.
D. WALLACE: Oh, friendly, interested, busy, you know, always there but very much separate from the grandmother relationship with me, you know, and he was very much off on his own.
179-180 -- MGW and Christmas.
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C. WALLACE: At Christmas time Mrs. Wallace would always make fruitcakes, and she had little loaf pans. Anyway, she covered the ... I'm out of breath. She covered the table in the dining room with ... oh, an old tablecloth or something, and that's where David, Marion, and myself would help her take like the citron and the cherries and dates and nuts and put them in flour, and then she'd make her batter and so forth and put the ... in these little pans. And she'd steam them. But she didn't steam them in the regular cook stove. On this wood stove she had a metal ... oh, a steamer. It was about so big, and she put them in there.
WILLIAMS: Was it about a foot high?
C WALLACE: Yeah, about like that, and she put these little ... They were only little pans about so big -- fruitcakes you generally make small -- and put the batter in those in this steamer and put it on the wood stove, and that's how she cooked them.
WILLIAMS: Would she give those fruitcakes away?
C. WALLACE: Yeah, for Christmas.
WILLIAMS: To friends, family?
C. WALLACE: Friends or family, whoever wanted one, and she kept a few for herself, but ... And then the old refrigerator was there.
183-184 -- Morning routines at 219 North Delaware.
C. WALLACE: Fred would come down, and his mother had made the oatmeal and the coffee, and he'd sit there at that end and drink coffee and eat his oatmeal.
WILLIAMS: On the east end.
C. WALLACE: And there wouldn't be anybody else. Nobody else was up. And then when Harry got up, he ate in the dining room, and Bess would make his breakfast and serve him in there. Grandmother Wallace, I don't know where she ate. She probably had eaten before any of us were up, I think.
D. WALLACE: She sat at the end of the dining room table where she always did and ate there.
C. WALLACE: Yeah. For breakfast?
D. WALLACE: Yeah.
C. WALLACE: I don't remember that.
WILLIAMS: Well, you said, I think, in the car the order of when people got up. Madge was first?
D. WALLACE: Well, that's interesting, yeah.
C. WALLACE: Grandmother Wallace always got up first and prepared the coffee, made the coffee and made the oatmeal. Then generally the next one up was Fred, and he'd come down, drink his coffee and eat his oatmeal there at the end of the table. And then everybody came down as they woke up. And I guess Harry was the next one, and Bess would fix his, and sometimes I'd see her plug in and iron and put up the ironing board and iron a shirt for Uncle Harry.
WILLIAMS: There's an ironing board back behind the door there.
C. WALLACE: Well, it was right here; that's where she ironed.
200 - 204 -- Dinner at 219 North Delaware Street.
WILLIAMS: Now, we've been told that when the Trumans were here they'd eat dinner in here every night.
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C. WALLACE: Yeah, we did.
WILLIAMS: When Mrs. Wallace was alive.
C. WALLACE: Yeah, Mrs. Wallace sat down there, and when Harry was here, he sat here.
WILLIAMS: Why would he sit up here and not one of ... like Fred or --
C. WALLACE: Because ... Well, it was partly their home, too. I don't know, maybe seniority or something.
WILLIAMS: Just because he was older?
C. WALLACE: I don't know, but he always sat here. Bess sat there, Margaret sat there.
WILLIAMS: Okay, let me say this on the tape. Bess sat on the east side next to Harry, Margaret sat on the east side next to Grandmother Wallace.
D. WALLACE: You understand the table is totally different. The other table has two central posts and not those corner legs.
C. WALLACE: David, look over there in that corner.
D. WALLACE: Oh, . Now you know where it is.
C. WALLACE: (chuckling) Yeah, that's the youth chair. Margaret used it, David used it, Marion used it.
D. WALLACE: Yeah, that's it.
WILLIAMS: And who sat on the west side?
C. WALLACE: I sat on the west --
WILLIAMS: Next to Harry.
C. WALLACE: And if Harry was here, generally Fred sat by his mother, and I sat here, and if the children were eating down here, well, David generally would sit between us.
D. WALLACE: Remember?
WILLIAMS: A cruet set?
D. WALLACE: The cruet set, Grandmother's?
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: That was Madge's?
C. WALLACE: Yeah, that was Grandmother Wallace's.
WILLIAMS: What was dinnertime like? Quiet?
C. WALLACE: Yeah, we talked.
WILLIAMS: Boisterous?
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C. WALLACE: No, but we all had a nice visit and talked.
D. WALLACE: It wasn't like they hadn't been sitting around together all day long cooking it.
C. WALLACE: Well, Uncle Harry sat here. When he was here, he served. And when Harry wasn't here ... What's the matter? When Uncle Harry wasn't here, Fred sat here.
WILLIAMS: At the head?
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Was this considered the head of the table?
C. WALLACE: No, Grandmother Wallace was the head of the table.
WILLIAMS: She always sat down by the kitchen?
C. WALLACE: Always by there. That's the proper place for her to sit. And then Vietta would bring and lay the... if we were having meat or fish or something, right here, and then that was served by whoever was sitting here.
WILLIAMS: A man.
C. WALLACE: Yeah. It was either Uncle Harry or Fred. And then Vietta would pass around the potatoes or the vegetable and so forth.
WILLIAMS: So she would come around with the dish and you'd take out what you wanted.
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: Okay. As a child what was it like? Do you remember? Were you expected to be quiet?
D. WALLACE: No, not particularly.
C. WALLACE: It wasn't boisterous, but it was just nice.
WILLIAMS: Margaret says that Grandmother Wallace believed that children were to be seen and not heard at dinnertime. Did you ever here that?
C. WALLACE: I never heard that.
D. WALLACE: Never.
WILLIAMS: So she wasn't giving you stern looks during dinnertime?
D. WALLACE: No.
C. WALLACE: No, but David, when he was old enough to sit in that chair and behave himself, he sat down here.
D. WALLACE: In the middle.
C. WALLACE: And then when Marion was kind of small, if I had help, she would be fed upstairs. And if I didn't, why, we just made room for her in here, too.
WILLIAMS: So Vietta would bring out each course and serve, and then go back?
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C. WALLACE: Yeah, and if the children were down here, why, I'd have their plates in front of me, too, and I'd serve the potatoes because they couldn't serve themselves, and the vegetable and so forth.
WILLIAMS: Did you have to clean up, change clothes for dinner?
C. WALLACE: No, but everybody ... Well, generally Bess and Grandmother Wallace --
D. WALLACE: She changed for dinner.
C. WALLACE: We always wore house dresses in the morning. And then after lunch, Grandmother Wallace would go in her room, close her door, and she'd bathe and so forth and put on a little afternoon dress. And Bess would do the same. She'd go upstairs and rest, probably, or if she was going to Kansas City, she of course had on a suit or something that would be appropriate to wear. As a rule, in the summertime the men would eat their dinner in their white shirts or whatever. It was too hot to wear a jacket.
WILLIAMS: Would they have their ties still on?
D. WALLACE: Yes.
C. WALLACE: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: And in the wintertime they'd keep their jackets?
C. WALLACE: They'd wear their jacket, yeah. And I don't know, I think we all had a nice dinner. We had a lot of company. I mean, and all the holidays, like Easter and Thanksgiving and so forth, why ... What was I going to say? Easter, Thanksgiving ... Frank and Natalie were up, and George and May, and sometimes they'd have my mother and father come.
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Dorsy Lou Warr Oral History 1991
• Friend and neighbor of Trumans'; daughter of "Polly" Compton (close friend of Trumans'). Interviewer Jim Williams.
• A childhood memory, Mrs. Warr’s one comment says a great deal.
28 -- Recollections of MGW.
WILLIAMS: Did you know Madge Wallace?
WARR: Grandmother?
WILLIAMS: Yes.
WARR: Only that when we went to visit the first thing you always did was to go in to see Grandmother and pay your respects to her.
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SECONDARY SOURCES

93

The Man from Missouri Alfred Steinberg, 1962

• Considering the date of publication, Steinberg provided unusually critical information about MGW. Unfortunately, he neglected to cite his sources.
12: Possible effects MGW may have had on HST’s confidence
What was there about Harry Truman that gave the impression he was too small for his job? Throughout his long political career, friends and opponents continually underrated him. Although he stood five feet ten inches tall, associates referred to him as being “below average height.” Even his mother-in-law, the imperious Mrs. Madge Gates Wallace, frankly told her friends in Independence, Missouri, that it was sheer wasted effort for him to campaign against Tom Dewey in 1948.
36: BWT’s background
In the years between Harry Truman’s graduation from high school and his return to the farm, a tragedy occurred in Bess Wallace’s life. People in Independence liked her father, David W. Wallace, a tall, good-looking man who sported long sideburns and a drooping mustache. He was easygoing and popular. When he was only thirty-one, he was already the Eminent Commander of the Knights Templar of Missouri. Bess’s mother, Madge Gates Wallace, was known for her royal bearing and, in fact, held the reputation as “the queenliest woman Independence every produced.” No one ever saw her in a house dress and few in town could bear up under her withering glance and frosty manner.
Dave Wallace’s trouble was that he could not provide adequately for Madge and their four children.
37: The courtship begins and MGW’s reaction
She [Bess] attended Barstow for two years, after which her doting grandfather bought her a handsome black horse and two greyhounds. When he purchased the first Studebaker in town, he taught her to drive it. Her life was one of ease except for the fact that her widowed mother leaned heavily on her for companionship, a relationship that was to remain until Madge Wallace’s death in December, 1952.
Bess Wallace had not considered Harry Truman as her beau in high school. Nor had she seen him in the intervening years. But one evening after a day of farming, he rode horseback into Independence and paid a call on his father’s sister, Aunt Ella Noland, who lived across the street from the Gates house on North Delaware. That very morning Bess’s mother had sent a cake to the Nolands. After Harry helped finish it, Aunt Ella asked her daughter Nellie to return the cake plate to Mrs. Wallace. Upon hearing the name, Harry seized the plate from Nellie’s hand and said he would be right back.
Two hours later, when he strolled into Aunt Ella’s house, he announced with a broad grin, “Well, I saw her.” This was the beginning of his courtship.
When Harry began seeing Bess, he was aware that her mother did not approve of him. As one of his friends put it: “Harry was about the most unpromising prospect for a husband we had around here then.” He had no money, no college education, and he lacked a future. It was preposterous to Madge Wallace that her daughter would marry a dirt farmer, and even worse, one who did not even own the farm he worked.
38: HST’s efforts to impress MGW
In 1913 [sic], Harry tried to ease his travel problem and at the same time impress old Mr. and Mrs. Gates and Madge Wallace by purchasing a secondhand Stafford for $600. When new, this four-door touring car sold at a list price of about $2,500. Harry’s used Stafford could still do sixty miles an hour, and before long, Bess’s brothers George and Frank brought their girl friends along when Harry and Bess went on picnics. Some of Harry’s friends credited his Stafford with helping to make him slightly more acceptable at 219 North Delaware Street.
After his father died, Harry was determined to make himself financially independent so that George Gates and Madge Wallace would take him seriously.
53: The wedding and life thereafter
Although Bess’s mother still had some misgivings, the wedding took place on June 28, 1919, at the small, red-brick Trinity Episcopal Church in Independence.
....
When they returned to Independence, they did not rent or buy a house of their own. Instead they moved into the Gates house at 219 North Delaware with Bess’s mother, Madge Wallace, and her grandmother, Elizabeth Emery Gates. (Grandfather George Gates had passed away while Truman was overseas.) Madge Wallace, the
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grandedame who was dubious about Truman as a son-in-law, nevertheless preferred that he live with her rather than lose Bess altogether.
The Gates house was certainly a more elegant place than Truman could afford. Even though it was built during the 1860’s, the house was in excellent condition and contained fourteen large rooms with high ceilings. There were seven [sic] bedrooms -- six upstairs and one on the ground floor -- three marble-mantled fireplaces, a large old-fashioned parlor, a music room, a dining room capable of accommodating thirty persons [!?], and a long porch that stretched across the rear of the house where Sunday supper was customarily eaten. The walls were covered with damask wallpaper, some of the windows had colored glass borders, and most of the furniture was a collection of antiques, including dainty chairs with petit-point seats. This was hardly the setting for a former dirt farmer and soldier, but Truman never expressed a complaint.
85: MGW and the 1926 campaign
During that fall campaign Truman took Bess with him to political meetings and gatherings wherever he spoke. Besides canvassing the county, he began to bring politicians to the Delaware Street house. This was not a happy experience for Bess’s mother, who found the Goats a coarse lot.
98: HST and life at 219 North Delaware
Of an evening when he was home on Delaware Street, he liked to read biographies and histories. Reading sometimes required great concentration because his mother-in-law was a stickler for maintaining her house in good repair. If the floors weren’t being sanded and polished, then the walls were being repapered or the curtains and draperies were down while the window trim was being painted. In addition, Madge Wallace’s relatives were generally about the place. Bess’s brothers, George and Frank, lived in small houses just below the big Gates house and came frequently with their wives, May and Natalie, for meals or a social evening. With all this bustle, Truman may have found it difficult to sit quietly near the old applewood clock in the parlor and read.
99: Grandmother Wallace and Margaret
Since Margaret was the only grandchild on the Wallace side of the family, she was in danger of being spoiled. Although her Uncle Fred, who still lived at home, was some 25 years her senior, he romped with her as if they were the same age. On occasion, said Margaret, Grandmother Wallace thought they were making too much rumpus and “called us both down with equal fervor.” Bess’s mother was immensely fond of her energetic, saucer-eyed granddaughter, but she looked askance whenever Margaret pedaled her tricycle wildly through her antique-crowded house.
138: The Independence-Washington routine
In the summer, when school let out, Bess, Margaret and Mrs. Wallace returned to Independence.
230: Living conditions at the start of the vice-presidential term
He, Bess, Margaret and Bess’s mother, Mrs. Wallace, were still living in their small apartment.
248-249: Living conditions in the White House
Bess also provided quarters for her mother. Madge Wallace was not in good health and Bess explained that she had to look after her because “no one else can live with her and a hired companion is out.” The old woman, imperious to the end, was still uncertain what to make of her son-in-law and his good fortune, especially since he did not assume a new personality to fit his new position.
....
In a letter, Truman complained to his mother that “the ships’ clock in Mrs. Wallace’s room bangs away in that crazy sailor count of bells.”
250: The family leaves HST in Washington
In June, when college let out, old Mrs. Wallace decided to return to Independence. Bess and Margaret accompanied her, leaving Truman alone in Washington.
346: HST’s eating habits
When he ate alone, as he did every summer when Bess took her mother back to Independence for the season, he picked at his food with little appetite.
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390: The scene right before the Blair House shooting
At one p.m. he returned to Blair House, where he had lunch with Bess and her mother. Afterward he went upstairs for a nap in his second-floor-front bedroom.
417: MGW’s death in the context of the Korean War
Truman’s animosity toward his successor grew sharper when Eisenhower went to Korea. Eisenhower had wired MacArthur that he would meet with him to discuss MacArthur’s so-called solution to the struggle in Korea, which did not involve “increased danger of provoking universal conflict.” Madge Wallace, Bess’s mother, had died in the White House on December 5, and Truman had accompanied his wife to Independence for the funeral. On the return trip to Washington, he read Eisenhower’s message to MacArthur in a newspaper. Exploding in wrath, he told reports, “If MacArthur has a solution he should present it to me!”
422: The Trumans become owners of 219 North Delaware
Truman was genuinely fond of the old house that had been built shortly after Lincoln’s assassination. In view of the decades which Bess had devoted to caring for her ailing mother, friends assumed that Madge Wallace would leave the house to her when she died. But Mrs. Wallace gave her surviving sons equal shares in the dwelling. Truman had to buy them out in order to acquire the house for himself.
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Harry S Truman Joseph Gies 1968

• Includes a single comment providing further evidence of the constant presence of MGW.
22: Suggestion that MGW moved to Washington soon after the 1934 election
That winter a jubilant Truman family -- Harry, Bess, Bess’s mother, and ten-year-old Margaret -- arrived in Washington and after suitable expressions of pained surprise at Washington rents, settled in a modest apartment in Tilden Gardens.
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Conflict and Crisis Robert Donovan 1977

• Although Donovan provides references for his book, the remarks about MGW are without documentation. Note the line “is said to have” in note 402. Unfortunately there is too much hearsay about Mrs. Wallace. The NPS has to avoid contributing to the myth by retelling these stories as fact rather than rumor.
148: HST’s friends’ responses to MGW
Mrs. Truman’s ailing widowed mother, Mrs. Margaret Gates Wallace, lived with the family much of the time they were in the White House. She still called the president “Mr. Truman.” His friends resented her because they believed she never ceased to consider him beneath the Wallaces, even then when he walked in the footsteps of Washington and Lincoln.
402: MGW’s (possible) remarks about HST’s chances in the 1948 election
Even Truman’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Wallace, is said to have told friends it was a waste of time for him to run against such a ticket [as Dewey and Warren].
98

Bess and Harry Jhan Robbins 1980

• Although a completely unreferenced book, there are included here some thought-provoking speculations. Unfortunately, one must take all the “facts” with a grain of salt. There are too many quotes by persons who preface their remarks with “Don’t use my name!” When names are used, it is difficult to verify the information. For example, Lillian Rogers Parks is quoted making references to hunger strikes by MGW when she felt neglected. This is very interesting information. But Robbins bibliography notes Parks book My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, yet I am unable to find this story in that book. Robbins may have done oral histories with some of these people, but there is no proof of that. Especially in light of the revelations about Plain Speaking, these kind of “gossip” books should never be taken at face value. To make matters even more suspect, some of the stories that are told in other places are repeated here in altered form. All this is really too bad, because otherwise this book has some great information in it.
13: MGW comments on Tom Pendergast
A neighbor once remarked to Madge Wallace, Bess’s mother, “Tom Pendergast always looks as if he’s hurting from a bad stomachache.”
To which Mrs. Wallace is reputed to have replied, “Also from a perpetual case of bad manners and body stench!”
14-15: Bess’s remarks about her mother
Reminiscing in her sixties, Bess recalled her and her three brothers’ childhood as “blissful.” She told Ethel Noland, “There were disappointments and some arguments, of course. Once my mother had a dress made for me that was a rather violent shade of red and I despised it -- refused to wear it. My mother didn’t scold me or reproach me, tell me I was spoiled or ungrateful. She just hung it up in the closet and said nothing. A few weeks later I wore it to church and everyone said how nice I looked. I felt like a fool.
“For forgetting my manners or other misdemeanors, I was punished, but never physically and never in anger. I forgot to water some houseplants that my grandfather especially prized. They withered and one died. As penalty, I was made to go to my room and practice doing bound buttonholes, which I hated. There was never much praise for things well done -- that was expected of me.”
17: MGW and her social standing
Bess was never allowed to forget her heritage as granddaughter of one of the town’s leading citizens. Gates passed down his strict patrician code to his daughter. Madge Gates was often called the queenliest woman Independence ever produced.
A whimsical story is told about her haughtiness: One day Bess’s mother and a friend were crossing Independence’s Main Street when a runaway horse came galloping by. As usual, Madge had her nose high in the air; the fast-moving mount stepped in a mud puddle and splattered her carefully selected dress. Madge was indignant and burst out sharply, “Of all the insolence! Doesn’t he know who I am?” Marriage to David Willock Wallace, a local youth who seemed destined for success, just enhanced her illusions of grandeur.
Somehow Bess didn’t inherit this idiosyncrasy.
21-22: David Wallace’s suicide and the rumored causes
A short time later [after high school graduation] Bess’s lighthearted adolescence abruptly ended. Her easy-natured father, then forty-three years old, returned from work, sat in the bathtub, and fired a pistol bullet into his head. He had been drinking heavily. Neighbors felt that his suicide had resulted from his being the husband of a woman who constantly reminded him of her exalted social position. One of them said, “Dave was heavily in debt. He tried so hard to keep up with his wealthy in-laws. He just couldn’t. Madge never let him forget it -- or who she was. It finally got to him.”
“Whatever you do, don’t use my name,” said another acquaintance. “I don’t want to be guilty of saying anything that would hurt Bess, because she’s such a fine person. But after he died, she became more reserved. I think her father’s suicide made her that way. What I really mean is that it made her more tolerant of other people. Her extreme public shyness seemed to show from then on. She was a tomboy before; almost overnight she became a refined lady -- and a fairly retiring one!”
After her father’s death, Bess, her brothers, and her widowed mother went to live in the Gates’s Delaware Street house. It was quickly decided that grief-stricken Bess should be sent to the very fashionable Barstow Finishing School for Girls in Kansas City, as her mother felt was fitting for a girl of her background.
23-24: The courtship and MGW
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[HST’s cousin Ardis Haukenberry said,] “Bess lived just across the street, and whenever Harry came to see us, he’d talk mainly about her; never did anything about it. During one of his visits, my grandmother said, ‘I have a plate that belongs to Mrs. Wallace. She sent over a cake. That will be a good way for you to meet Bess again.’ He was so anxious to get across the street with that plate everybody prayed he wouldn’t drop it on the way over.”
Mrs. Wallace wasn’t very impressed by the friendship, and she didn’t hide her disapproval. Janey Chiles, a former Independence schoolteacher, said, “I thought they would never get married. There wasn’t anybody in town Mrs. Wallace didn’t look down on. And Harry Truman was not at the time a very promising prospect.”
Harry’s grandfather Solomon Young had died, and John Truman was now running the farm. He asked his son for help. For the next ten [sic] years Harry climbed out of bed before dawn, milked cows, fed hogs, plowed, sowed, harrowed, and reaped, as well as practicing the piano and doing a great deal of reading.
“Mrs. Wallace had never been a farm woman,” said Mrs. Haukenberry. “She didn’t think anyone who tilled the soil could possibly amount to much, and despite Harry’s passion for books and music, she still thought of him as a poor dirt-farmer. And what’s worse, one who didn’t even own the farm he worked.”
Before returning to the Young farm, Harry had had a series of town jobs that Mrs. Wallace also felt were uninspiring and without future.
29: MGW’s reaction to the engagement
Neighbors claim that they would have been married long before [1919]. Harry wanted to. So did Bess. But she was a dutiful daughter who always obeyed her mother.
“Madge Wallace may not have been overly pleased with the news,” said Mrs. Haukenberry. “But Harry was beside himself with joy. Bess, too, was thrilled.”
31: The wedding
On June 28, 1919, less than two months after Harry’s discharge from the army, he and Bess were married. He was thirty-five, she was thirty-four. Although Mrs. Wallace still had strong reservations about Truman’s qualities as a son-in-law, she made certain that her daughter would be the loveliest bride the town had ever seen. Bess was elaborately dressed in white georgette with three-quarter-length bell-shaped sleeves, pointed white kid slippers with white enamel buckles, and a white wide-brimmed faille hat. She carried a bouquet of specially grown hothouse rosebuds, baby’s breath and fern.
The bridegroom wore a black-and-white checkered suit, and an extremely short army haircut. His sporty, informal clothes and appearance bothered no one but Mrs. Wallace. When she first saw him, she is said to have rolled her eyes to the ceiling of the church and murmured, “Preserve us! Couldn’t he at least have borrowed a white linen?”
Dr. John Plunkett, the minister who married the couple, said, “I don’t think I have ever seen a more eager groom. During the service he said I do three times -- twice when I was just stopping for breath.”
32-33: Moving in with MGW
It would be nice to say that from that moment [their wedding] on the Trumans lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so. Their marriage may have been a splendid one, but it certainly wasn’t all sweetness and light. The Trumans lived in Mrs. Wallace’s home, just as the Roosevelts had lived in the home of FDR’s mother, Mrs. James Roosevelt, at Hyde Park. It was often done in those days when matriarchs were stronger; newly married women were thought to need guidance and external appearances mattered more. Trouble started soon after a brief honeymoon in Chicago and Port Huron, Michigan. The couple moved into Bess’s house on North Delaware Street with Mrs. Gates and Mrs. Wallace -- Mr. Gates had died while Harry was overseas. It was a much grander place than the brand-new husband could possibly afford -- hardly the setting for a dirt farmer. He chafed because he couldn’t pay even half the expenses. It also meant living with a grandmother-in-law as well as a mother-in-law.
Almost from the first day some refined, one-sided quibbling began. Mrs. Wallace would cut stories out of newspapers and magazines that depicted the sad plight of the farmer and leave them out on the hall table as if to say, “See what your wife saved you from?” or “See how opportunistically you have handled yourself?”
Harry refused to be quarrelsome. From boyhood on Truman had been known for his ability to mollify. Mrs. Haukenberry recalls that he frequently was asked to settle family disputes. He called the more difficult kinfolk prima donnas. Daughter Margaret feels that a great deal of her father’s success with Bess was due to his complete unwillingness to argue.
One of the few complaints Truman ever made about the living arrangement was to Ted Marks, a local tailor and fellow veteran who had been best man at the wedding. He told Marks that sometimes his female in-laws treated
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him like a “small boy with dirty knees.” But when he found it too upsetting, he’d remember his wife. “Suddenly,” he said, “everything becomes very worthwhile.”
Susan Chiles, an Independence neighbor, remarked, “Harry was always as nice as anyone could be to Mrs. Wallace. It was a most remarkable thing, and I think people around here respect him as much for that as anything else.... What really troubled him was finding the right kind of job.”
The new Mrs. Truman understood her husband’s dilemma in discovering his proper role in the civilian world. She wondered if farming would allow him to display his “special talents,” whatever they might be.
“She didn’t exactly say no to farming,” said Mrs. Haukenberry. “She didn’t have to, since it was perfectly clear that she wasn’t cut out to be a farmer’s wife. Anyway, Harry wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. He preferred the way of the city. His brother Vivian was the farmer.”
Even with fourteen rooms it was difficult to find privacy, and the couple spent an inordinate amount of time in their bedroom. “The only opportunity he had to be alone with Bess,” said Ted Marks, “was when their bedroom door was shut tight. Bess struggled to give her husband and mother equal time. Believe me, sometimes it required a lot of ingenuity.”
On one occasion a local plumber came to repair a leaking kitchen faucet. Harry knew the workman and welcomed him warmly. Mrs. Wallace noticed the hearty greeting. She harrumphed loudly and arched her eyebrows higher than usual. It was very obvious that she didn’t approve of her son-in-law’s familiarity with the blue-collar worker. Bess quickly came to her husband’s rescue and poured coffee for everybody present.
“It’s difficult to cross swords when you’re sipping blazing coffee,” Marks philosophized.
40: MGW’s comment on HST’s “judgeship”
Bess and Harry may have been impressed with the title. Mrs. Wallace was not. “Mr. Truman isn’t a real judge!” she said haughtily. “He can’t even marry anybody or sentence a robber caught in the act.”
43: MGW and politicians
Another election was coming up that year [1926], and the Trumans had decided that Harry should try to get back into politics. The office they had in mind was that of county collector. Salary: $25,000 a year. Boss Pendergast, when he was consulted, vetoed the idea and instead offered Trumans the nomination for presiding judge of the county court. Salary: $6000.
“Once more they had a lengthy conference,” said Vaughan. “They discussed the pros and cons. Bess was never happy in politics, but she was practical.”
During the campaign a great many politicians visited the Delaware Street house. Mrs. Wallace wasn’t pleased about the guests and considered them unwelcome intruders and “a bunch of coarse louts.” She was delighted at what happened when one ward heeler picked up little Margaret and tried to kiss her. The frightened youngster pinched his bulbous nose as hard as she could, and he screamed in pain. Bess’s mother said loudly, “Serves the old fool right!”
88: Ownership of 219 North Delaware
“It [the White House] was the first house they ever had,” said J. B. West, former chief usher. “Mrs. Truman’s mother owned the one in Independence.”
89: The first separation as President and First Lady
On June 2, 1945, Bess, Margaret and Mrs. Wallace left for Independence.
124: HST and mother-in-law jokes
As a rule, Bess didn’t like the in-law jokes Truman loved to tell. In Helper, Utah, the crowd roared when he compared the Republican Party to “big-mouthed mother-in-laws who get all burnt up because they aren’t invited to some kaffeeklatch.” He explained that he meant they were kept out because only the Democrats had an easy fellowship with farmers and blue-collar workers.
“When Harry got back to his private car,” Ross said, “Bess laid down the law to him. He never gave out with a mother-in-law joke again, but she never knew what to expect from him next.”
134-138: CHAPTER XVII THE PRESIDENT’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
Bess and Harry shared living quarters with Madge Wallace for many years. During that period they frequently heard her mutter, “My daughter could have married someone from her own background!”
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“She seemed to delight in belittling her son-in-law,” said Ethel Noland. “Even when Harry became President, she continued to put him down. She was never sold on the idea that he was qualified to do anything properly. And she wasn’t at all reserved in talking about it. She’d say things like, ‘I know dozens of men better qualified to be in Mr. Truman’s place in the White House!’ [This is certainly at odds with Ethel Noland’s oral history interview.]
“I’m sure it caused Harry a great deal of distress, but you never caught him making a single negative statement against her in any fashion. The nearest he came is when once he kidded, ‘I wonder if Madge Wallace is related to Henry Wallace?’”
Miss Noland had other thoughts about Truman and his mother-in-law. “Being browbeaten by her,” she said, “only endeared him and made him seem more human to people close by. Some new acquaintances once hazarded charitably that the aging woman was getting senile. Harry replied cheerily, “Oh, my, she’s always like that. But any fellow who married her Bess would have got the same treatment.”
Despite Truman’s unfailing considerateness toward his spouse, the First Lady had to walk a very thin rope when the situation revolved around her husband and her mother. No incident was too trivial to provoke absurd caustic comment from Mrs. Wallace. Of her tolerant son-in-law she remarked loudly that he didn’t comb his hair properly, that his bow tie wasn’t appropriate, that he made too much noise when swallowing soup and sipped it off the wrong part of the spoon.
Bess carefully tried to avoid antagonistic answers. However, the day after Truman dismissed General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination, the servants heard Mrs. Wallace peevishly ask her daughter, “Why did your husband have to fire that nice man? Why didn’t he let General MacArthur run the Korean War in his own way? Imagine a captain from the National Guard telling off a West Point general!”
This time Bess snapped back belligerently, “My husband, Mother, happens to be commander-in-chief! And that outranks a general! My husband does what he believes best for the country!” Then she turned her back on her mother and marched out of the room. It was very rare for Bess to make any hostile reply, and a few minutes later she returned to apologize.
Bess insisted on personally caring for Mrs. Wallace and seemed to ignore the fact that it complicated her life to a point where another woman would blow up. Her brother Fred said, “She always was a devoted daughter. She saw to it that my mother didn’t lack for anything. Why, my mother’s room has every possible comfort. Bess is a very thoughtful daughter.”
In later years Mrs. Wallace seldom left that room. Each day Bess spent time with her. “She really loved that lady,” recalled Mrs. Parks, “although at times I think she found her childishly annoying. One day the First Lady had an extra heavy schedule and had to cut her visit short. You would have though the world was coming to an end the way Mrs. Wallace carried on. Her way of getting back was to refuse to eat.”
That was when one of Bess’s friends offered to help. She said that her mother had presented a similar problem, and she successfully solved it by using a combination of firmness and tact. The following day the well-meaning woman, to demonstrate her sweet persuasion, entered Mrs. Wallace’s room and in a determined, singsong voice, cooed, “Eat all that food like my good little girl!”
Again Mrs. Wallace turned thumbs down. This time she said haughtily, “I’ll have you know that I’m not your good little girl! Now, I want to take a nap so do please leave the room!” The visitor scuttled.
When the President heard about the incident, he was amused. “Here I thought Bess inherited her sense of humor from her father,” he said delightedly. “I see that it comes from her mother, too.”
Once when Bess was visiting Margaret in New York, Harry tried to pinch-hit for his wife. Lillian Rogers Parks recalled that occasion. “Mrs. Wallace didn’t exactly welcome his entering her room. When he stopped by to see how she was getting on, she’d lean over and pretend to pick something up or put something away in a drawer. She’d make out that she didn’t see or hear him. She was not going to be egged into saying so much as good morning to that man if she didn’t have to! I mentioned it to Mr. Prettyman, the President’s valet, and he explained it this way: ‘Mrs. Wallace always thought Harry Truman wouldn’t amount to anything. It galls her to see him in the White House ruining that prediction.”
Some White House employees were convinced that Mrs. Wallace suffered from a plain case of jealousy where Harry was concerned. “It irritated her badly to see the President and Mrs. Truman together,” said one. “Whenever that happened, she would try anything to pry them apart. When she was still well enough to come down to meals, I remember one time she saw the President escort Bess to a seat at the table and then place his hand on his wife’s hair in a loving, caressing pat. Mrs. Wallace saw red when she caught that gesture. Her hands shook so that she knocked over a pitcher of cream. Whether it was an accident or done on purpose to distract them, I can’t say, but the cream dripped down on Bess’s dress and the President got even closer to his wife, trying to mop it up. The old lady got even madder than ever. ‘Ask the maid to do that!’ she snapped.
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“‘Aw, it’s my pleasure,’ the President said and grinned. He was on to her, you see.”
Margaret, on the other hand, found her grandmother to be “a gentle-looking woman who always seemed interested in my welfare.” She said, “When I was a child, my Grandmother Wallace would give me cookies and see to it that my friends and I had sufficient money for the movies. As I grew older, she was pleased with my successes.”
At the age of ninety Madge Wallace suffered a severe stroke. A week later she died of cerebral thrombosis. Her body was taken to Independence for burial. Ethel Noland, who was one of the mourners, said, “I suppose in some ways she was a mystery. But in spite of whatever faults Mrs. Wallace possessed, she had good qualities, too. After all, wasn’t she the mother of Bess Truman!”
Some Truman friends have quietly speculated that Bess’s enigmatic relationship with her mother was not such a mystery after all. It would have been “so sensible” for her to give her mother into the care of one of her brothers, who had repeatedly volunteered for the job. Why, then, did she not? There is no record that Mrs. Wallace expressed such a wish one way or the other.
One intimate said, “Don’t use my name -- the family would boil me in oil -- but I think Bess got some comfort from making her mother live each day with the overwhelming triumph of Harry Truman, the man Madge Wallace had sneeringly predicted would amount to nothing. And perhaps it was a bit of vengeance, too, for the memory of her father, who had taken his own life because he could not live up to the demanding expectations of his wife.
“Bess loved those two men with all her heart.”
103

Tumultuous Years Robert Donovan 1982

• One remark, again demonstrating the constant presence of MGW.
294: The scene in Blair House just before the assassination attempt of 1950
As was his habit, Truman was taking a nap in his second-story bedroom facing the sidewalk. The window was open, but the temperature had risen to 84 degrees and the president was stretched out on the bed in his underwear. Mrs. Truman and her mother, Mrs. David W. Wallace, were in another part of the house. Margaret Truman, who had become a professional singer, had gone to Portland, Maine, to give a concert. In the heat the wooden front door of Blair House was open, but the screen door was latched.
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Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency Robert Ferrell 1983

• In my opinion, one of the best books about Harry Truman, but of little value in terms of MGW. Nothing new here, other than the further reemphasis on her constant presence.
8: Ferrell tells the cake plate story again
One day he came into his aunt’s kitchen to learn that Mrs. Wallace, Bess’s mother, had sent over a cake and that the plate needed to be returned.
11-12: The newly wedded Trumans move into 219 North Delaware
After a short wedding trip to Chicago, Detroit, and Port Huron, Michigan, they moved into the house where Bess had lived with her mother, at 219 North Delaware.
30: MT shares a bedroom with MGW in Washington
For the senator’s young daughter Margaret, a spindly ten-year-old when Truman first ran for the Senate and on the verge of becoming a young lady when that term was finished, the experience of moving in and out of the Independence public schools was not exhilarating, nor was the life in Washington in a cramped two-bedroom apartment, where she shared a room with Grandmother Wallace.
105

Historic Structures Report: History and Significance Ron Cockrell 1984

• Essentially a compilation rather than new material, Cockrell’s book collects a great deal of Truman information into a single source. He does provide some financial notes that do not appear elsewhere.
24-25: The childhood family of MGW
George and Elizabeth Gates had three daughters, Margaret (“Madge,” born 1862; mother of Bess Wallace Truman), Maud (1864), and Myra (1866), when the letters from Edward P. Gates arrived. The decision was soon made to make the move to Missouri.
44: The early married life of MGW and David Wallace
Despite David Wallace’s apparently bright future, George P. Gates did not approve of Wallace courting his oldest daughter, Madge. Nonetheless, the two fell in love and eloped. David Wallace and Madge Gates were married on June 13, 1883.
The couple moved nearby to a house at 117 West Ruby Street. The house, which David Wallace purchased on July 28, 1882, is extant. It was at 117 West Ruby that David and Madge Wallace’s first child -- Elizabeth Virginia “Bess” Wallace -- was born on February 13, 1885. With the additional expenses of starting a family, the couple’s finances were strained.
48: The Wallaces move to 219 North Delaware
Madge Wallace later admitted that she “felt so humiliated” by her husband’s suicide that she left with her four children to stay with relatives (most likely Frank E. Gates, an uncle) in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for nearly a year. When Madge Wallace, Bess and her brothers, Frank, George, and Fred, returned to Independence in 1904, they were welcomed into the spacious house at 219 North Delaware.
The arrangement was ideal. Madge Wallace was able to care for her aging parents while Bess, then a day student at the Barstow School for Girls in Kansas City (a post-secondary, finishing school), continued her duty helping raise her brothers, most notably young Fred.
70: The dispersion of the estate of George Gates (indicates MGW’s financial state)
Final settlement of the estate came in probate court on December 9, 1918. It read as follows:
Name
Real Estate
Personal Property
Total Value
Elizabeth Gates (widow)
$11,244.13
(annuity)
$11,244.13
George Walter Gates (son)
$6260.40
$16,986.99
$23,247.39
Madge Wallace (daughter)
$6260.40
$16,986.99
$23,247.39
Maud Louise Wells (daughter)
$6260.40
$26,986.99
$33,247.39
Ayra Wallace (daughter)
$6260.40
$21,986.99
$28,247.39
Frank E. Gates (son)
$6260.40
$16,986.99
$23,247.39
73-74: HST and BWT settle into married life at 219 North Delaware
Harry and Bess Truman returned to 219 North Delaware after their Michigan honeymoon to begin married life in 1919. It proved to be their lifelong home together. The principal reason the couple did not establish their own household was due to the chronic frail health of Madge Wallace who suffered from sciatica, a neuritis of the hip area. The painful affliction severely restricted the daily activity of Madge Wallace. With the responsibility of caring for her mother and grandmother, Bess Truman decided to remain at her family home. One relative recalled:
Bess thought they should stay until her mother got used to the idea. Bess was very devoted to her mother. Oh, very! And, of course, Mrs. Wallace was a very wonderful mother, a very devoted mother. So, mother never got quite settled enough for Bess to leave. And they liked it that way, and Harry liked it that way. He was devoted to Mrs. Wallace, too, and she to him....
Another stated:
After they were married, they thought they were going to live out in Grandview, but that summer, Mother Wallace became very ill. Bess came home; it was soon after they were married. She came home to take care of her mother, and they never did establish any other residence.
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80-82: MGW acquires 219 North Delaware
Assets of the estate [of Elizabeth Emery Gates in 1924] were appraised at $56,013.09, and of that figure, Frank E. Gates received almost $30,000, while each daughter received less than $5,000....
Because of his frail health, Frank E. Gates could not move to Missouri and live in the family home which he had inherited. Madge Wallace, however, was very much interested in having the old house for herself and her family. She used her share of her mother’s estate, plus some additional funds to buy the property.
....
On October 4, 1924, Madge Wallace purchased Lots 2 and 3 and the west 14.18 feet of Lot 1 from the trustees of the Estate of George P. Gates (Frank E. Gates and T. B. Wallace). She bought the property for $10,000.
The three Gates daughters did not have long to wait to inherit the remainder of their mothers’ estate because Frank E. Gates, 54, passed away in 1925. On September 4, 1926, Madge Wallace limited her property to include only Lots 2 and 3. She deeded the west fourteen and eighteen one-hundredths feet of Lot 1 to her son and daughter-in-law, George Porterfield and Mary (May) Southern Wallace, for “one dollar and other valuable considerations.”
....
Five people occupied the Wallace house in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Madge Wallace’s quarters were in the second floor master bedroom, while her youngest son, Fred, had the northwest corner bedroom. Margaret Truman had her own bedroom between the second floor bathroom and her parents’ room, connected by a passageway (circa 1926).
93: The fate of MGW’s sitting room above the kitchen and the flavor of the house in general
Madge Wallace no longer had a sewing/sitting room on the second floor. By the 1920s, the room had become a storage area known as “the back room” where “everything was just shoved in there that we didn’t want to use.” The back stairs remained a popular, quick avenue to go to and from the kitchen and the second floor.
....
The theme of the interior furnishings was Victorian, which conformed to the personal tastes of Madge Wallace who delighted in her antiques as well as the Gates family heirlooms.
101: An extended family occupies the Wallace house
Fred Wallace, the youngest son of Madge Wallace, was married in 1930 and brought his new wife, Christine, to live in his mother’s house at 219 North Delaware. To them was born a son, David, in 1934. Madge Wallace, 72, had abandoned her second floor west bedroom in the mid to late 1920s in favor of her late parents’ first floor room. Because of her advanced age and chronic sciatica, she could no longer negotiate the stairway. Madge Wallaces’ former bedroom then became a nursery for David Wallace, with his parents’ northwest corner bedroom nearby. In 1937, he shared his room with a new sister, Marion.
The Fred Wallace family lived with Madge Wallace and the Trumans from 1934 to 1942. An architect and engineer, Fred Wallace and his family moved to Denver in 1942 where he became the regional manager of the War Production Board in April 1945. The family later moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
106: MGW tries to live alone
The Fred Wallace family moved to Colorado shortly afterward in 1942, leaving Madge Wallace alone in her large house. Physically unable to care for the home herself, she closed up 219 North Delaware and moved into a small apartment on nearby Maple Avenue. She spent one winter there, came back to the home with the Trumans in the summer, then moved back to Washington with them in the fall.
107: MGW continues routine of moving between Washington and Independence
After spending the Christmas holidays in Independence, the Trumans and Mrs. Madge Wallace again closed up 219 North Delaware and returned to Washington for the inauguration.
129: MGW prefers the freedom of Independence
Secret Service protection stripped the family of its previous freedom of movement. One tradition the family refused to relinquish, however, was the practice of spending the summers in Independence. It was Mrs. Madge Wallace who especially preferred the familiar surroundings of her own home during the hot summer months. So, too, did Mrs. Truman and her daughter Margaret who began the summer homecoming tradition as early as 1935.
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174-175: The death of MGW
For nearly a decade, Mrs. Wallace lived with the Trumans in Washington -- in apartments, Blair House, and the White House -- and at her own home in Independence. Bess Truman insisted on the arrangement, even when her brothers Frank and George offered to have their aging mother live with them. The First Lady would not hear of it, stating, “It’s a daughter’s duty to look after her mother.”
The President’s mother-in-law was a proud woman who insisted upon paying her own way. In August 1946, Bess Truman forwarded to her husband a $40 check from Mrs. Wallace which Mrs. Wallace insisted should go toward the grocery bill at the Summer White House. Harry Truman responded:
Wish your mother wouldn’t insist on assuming these bills. She should sit back and let us do the worrying as she didn’t in days gone by. I’d like her to feel she hasn’t a financial worry in the world as long as I have a job and I want my mother to feel the same way. Don’t tell her, but I’ll invest her payment of the grocery bill in the game of chance, which I anticipate on the Williamsburg beginning Friday.
Almost a month before the Truman administration became history, Madge Gates Wallace, age 90, died. She lingered for two weeks after suffering a stroke which progressed into pneumonia. She died at 11:35 a. m., December 5, in her White House bedroom. [This doesn’t agree with Margaret’s remarks saying her grandmother died at 12:37 p.m. Difference in time zone, perhaps?] With her at her death were the President and Mrs. Truman, and the family physician, Dr. Wallace H. Graham. On December 7, the First Family flew back to Independence for the funeral. The service, held at 3 p.m., December 8, was private and was held at 219 North Delaware. According to her wishes, Madge Wallace’s casket was placed in the parlor/music room and an Episcopal minister lead the service. After the funeral, the body was taken to Woodlawn Cemetery for interment in the Gates family plot.
State functions in the White House were canceled during the month-long family mourning period for Mrs. Wallace. Christmas of 1952, the last during the Truman presidency and the first without Mrs. Wallace, was not spent at the Independence family home as was customary, but in the White House. Only once before, in 1947, had the Trumans remained at the White House for Christmas, always preferring to go to their own home in Missouri.
177-179: MGW’s estate
Unlike her parents, Madge Gates Wallace died intestate. Frank Gates Wallace, her oldest son, financial adviser, and conductor of the family’s interests in the Waggoner-Gates Milling Company, was appointed administrator of the estate. Madge Wallaces’ four children, Bess Truman, Frank G. Wallace, George P. Wallace, and David “Fred” Wallace, agreed to divide their mother’s estate equally between them. There never was a question of who among the four would receive the Gates-Wallace mansion. The three Wallace brothers had their own established homes and 219 North Delaware, the Summer White House, had been the home of Bess Wallace Truman for nearly half a century. The house would go to her. Margaret Truman recalled:
...my grandmother died without leaving a will so the whole family had agreed that Mother and Dad should live here. This should be their house. But they insisted on buying, assuming that everybody had a quarter share, and paying everybody what a quarter share was worth. Then they would own it free and clear.
The first and largest of four financial claims filed against Madge Wallace’s estate was by Harry S Truman. He asked the probate court for the payment of $9,373.64 to cover the cost of labor and material for unspecified repairs to the residence at 219 North Delaware. The period the repairs covered was from August 8, 1945, to November 28, 1950. According to Truman’s lawyer, Rufus Burrus, the claim covered the cost of the 1950 rear porch extension, roof repairs, and interior repairs.
The probate court allowed the Truman claim on March 20, 1953. On March 28, it approved another request by estate administrator, Frank G. Wallace. Wallace declared that since the estate was unable to pay its creditors without converting some of its assets into cash, Mrs. Madge Wallace’s Waggoner-Gates Milling Company stocks should be sold. The court agreed and two certificates were sold to the Waggoner family for $23,531.25
The remaining three claims filed against the estate also involved the Gates-Wallace house. On April 22, 1953, John S. Hurst filed a claim for $625 for “repairs to the property caused by windstorm.” The final claim on July 8 by the Western Adjustment and Inspection Company asked for $864.60 “covering damage caused by windstorm.”
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There is no indication when the windstorm occurred or when the above stated repairs were accomplished. The total sum of repairs conducted at 219 North Delaware filed against the estate of Madge Gates Wallace was $11,102.84.
185: Changes at 219 North Delaware after MGW’s death
Until December 1952, Madge Wallace was the mistress of 219 North Delaware and changes and improvements could only be approved through her. Not many changes took place during the presidential period when the house stood empty more than two-thirds of each year. Because the home belonged to Mrs. Wallace, the Trumans refrained from making any substantial changes because Madge Wallace was “a woman who didn’t like things to change much.”
109

Truman: A Centenary Remembrance Robert Ferrell 1984

• The first of Ferrell’s Truman books to be published 100 years or more after HST’s birth. At this point, the 100th anniversary, and the death of Mrs. Truman two years earlier, may have prompted authors to take a second look at the peripheral characters in the Harry Truman story, in particular his mother-in-law. Keep in mind, however, that, at this point, Plain Speaking was still being accepted as fact.
33: MGW’s station early in life
At 608 North Delaware, in a sizable home crowned by a cupola, lived the Gates’ daughter, Madge, married to handsome David Willock Wallace, son of a Jackson County pioneer and himself a rising county official.
Madge was adored by her father, who even had her likeness printed on his mill’s flour sacks. Her only daughter, Elizabeth, who was known as Bessie or Bess, was born in 1885, and would later become Harry Truman’s wife.
46-47: David Wallace’s suicide and the aftermath
No one has ever been sure why David Willock Wallace sat down in the bathtub and put a revolver to his head. If anyone in the family guessed the reason, it was not discussed. His widow took her four children -- the youngest a boy aged three -- to Colorado Springs for a year, then came back to move in with Grandmother and Grandfather Gates at 219 North Delaware. No one inside the Wallace household ever spoke openly of David Wallace again, though somewhat later Mrs. Wallace told Mary Paxton that she felt utterly humiliated by the suicide. After returning from Colorado, she sent Bess to Barstow, a private finishing school in Kansas City. Bess did not board there, but continued to live at home. Mrs. Wallace probably leaned heavily on Bess, who at eighteen was now mature enough to be her mother’s confidante. As well as having the sole responsibility for bringing up three sons, Mrs. Wallace had been left with a deep sense of shame. Later on, “Mother Wallace” (as she came to be called) became a force to be reckoned with, not only in her own household, but later in Harry’s. He learned to tread lightly with Bess where her mother was concerned, and the frame of his domestic life always had room for his mother-in-law until she died in 1952.
Perhaps her mother’s sorrows and her three young brothers’ needs kept Bess from making a marriage with one of her other suitors. For whatever reason, she was still single and at home on Delaware Street when Harry found his first real chance to court her seriously. One day in 1910, Harry was visiting Aunt Ella Noland and her daughters Nellie and Ethel, who by then had moved to 216 North Delaware, a little house right across from 219. His Aunt Ella mentioned that she had a cake plate of Mrs. Wallace’s that needed returning, and (according to Margaret Truman, who heard the story from family talk) Harry seized the plate “with something approaching the speed of light” and took it across the street. When Bess answered his knock, the courtship was on.
85: The extended family
During these years Truman lived with Bess, their daughter Margaret, who had been born in 1924, and Mother Wallace in a succession of cramped, two-bedroom apartments in Washington. He loved having his family with him -- his Bess, who he still thought of as the light in every day, and his beloved Margie, “my beautiful baby,” as he continued to call her even when he was President and she a young woman. Even the indomitable Mother Wallace helped turn the Washington flats into something more like the Independence home he missed. Of course, Bess, her mother, and her daughter missed Independence too, and they often went back.
86: HST misses his family
It was neither a glamorous life nor an adventurous one. Mostly it was busy -- and when Margaret, Bess, and Mrs. Wallace went home to Independence, it was lonely.
132: The first evening as President
Bess and Margaret went home to 4701 Connecticut Avenue, while the President stayed for a first meeting with his Cabinet. Then he too went home, to find that Bess, Margaret, and Mother Wallace were next door at a neighbor’s apartment.
136: MGW attempts to pay her own way
Once Bess passed along $40 paid by Mother Wallace toward grocery expenses. He gravely responded that he wished her mother would just sit back and let him assume her financial worries; then he added, “Don’t tell her, but I’ll invest her payment...in a game of chance....”
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182-183: HST & BWT are often separated
Perhaps the worst aspect of life in the White House for the President of the United States was the First Lady’s desire not to live in their official residence, but to return to Independence, to a house she knew, where she felt comfortable. In the Senate years Truman had been able to prevail upon Bess to be present while the Upper House was in session. She held the required open houses and teas and went to the social functions his office required. Bess, Margaret, and Mrs. Wallace brought life to the succession of cramped apartments the Trumans occupied. With its public rooms uncomfortably close to the private quarters, the house was maddeningly inconvenient. Although the grounds outside were large enough, it was impossible for the First Family to walk even there without being accompanied by obtrusive Secret Service men, and their presence called the group to the attention of tourists who pressed their faces against the surrounding iron railings and often called and shouted to the Trumans, frequently cheery hellos, but also constant requests for photographs, sometimes even for autographs. At that point any private enjoyment of the grounds disappeared and the Trumans believed themselves inmates of a zoo.
The “Great White Jail” was the family’s name for the White House, and while the Roosevelts had apparently enjoyed every minute of their occupancy, the Missouri President distinctly did not. Each time he said goodbye to his wife and daughter it was an excruciatingly painful experience, for he knew that he would not see them for weeks, possibly even for months. Bess and Mrs. Wallace always went by train -- Bess detested airplanes. The President would take them to Union Station and usually rode with them as far as Silver Spring, Maryland, saying his goodbyes in the privacy of their Pullman quarters, but then he got off at the small suburban station, and waved to them as the train disappeared down the track.
238: The death of MGW
Despite stiff relations with his successor, Truman found that his last days in the White House held some happy times. The family was together for once, gathered partly for the social responsibilities the waning of an administration required, and partly to be with Mrs. Wallace, Bess’s mother, who had fallen into her final illness. Mother Wallace died in December; her passing sealed for the family their sense that directions were truly changing for history and for the Trumans.
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The Trumans of Independence Ron Cockrell 1985

• A similar document to Cockrell’s book of 1984, this one (in spite of some expected repetition) deals more with the family, rather than the house on Delaware Street, as a subject and is therefore of more interest in terms of MGW.
20: The place and date of MGW’s birth
In the Port Byron/Moline area, George P. and Elizabeth Gates had three daughters: Margaret (“Madge,” born 1862), Maud (1864), and Myra (1866).
29: George Gates uses his daughters for his flour label
Throughout the company’s history on all Waggoner-Gates flour sacks appeared a young woman in a bustle holding a fan and standing before a beaded curtain. Tradition dictates the young woman was either a composite of George P. Gates’s three daughters or was actually the oldest and loveliest daughter, Madge.
31: George P. Gates builds a mansion
The 1848-50/1867 home, a two-story structure with an east-west roof orientation facing Blue Avenue, was cramped, but adequate for his large family. By 1885, his youngest son, Frank, was 14 and his oldest daughter, Madge, was married.
41-45: The David Willock Wallace family
George Porterfield Gates’s oldest daughter, Margaret Elizabeth (“Madge”), gained the reputation as the “queenliest woman Independence ever produced.” She prided herself on her clothing and erect posture. To many, it seemed inevitable that she would fall in love and marry the “handsomest man in town,” David Willock Wallace.
....
David Wallace, 23, and Madge Gates, 21, did indeed fall in love and planned to be married. The wedding took place the evening of June 13, 1883, at the First Presbyterian Church. The Kansas City Journal remarked that “The event, in importance and elegance, was one which Independence society rarely celebrates.” The article continued,
The bride is a daughter of Mr. George P. Gates, of the firm of Waggoner & Gates, millers, of this city. She is one of the most refined and accomplished as well as one of the prettiest brunettes in the city. The groom, Mr. D. W. Wallace...is very popular, and possibly no young man in the county has as extended an acquaintance and as many personal friends as he.
At 8:00 p.m., the church was filled to capacity. Forty minutes later, Madge Gates was escorted to the alter by G. P. Gates. A reception followed the ceremony at 219 North Delaware. The Journal reported:
After the ceremony the bridal party repaired to the elegant residence of Mr. Geo. P. Gates on Delaware Street, where the reception was held. The house was brilliantly lighted. In the parlor under a canopy of flowers the newly married couple received the congratulations of their relatives and intimate friends, of whom about fifty couples were in attendance. The beautiful lawn surrounding the house was lighted with Chinese lanterns, though the moon, which has so long been obscured by the clouds, has scarcely ever shone more brightly, and the night seemed to have been modeled for such an occasion as was the event of the wedding. Tables were set about on the lawn, on which a most delicious repast was served. Mrs. Gates, as hostess, rendered the repast all the more delicious by her endeavors to contribute to the enjoyment of all the guests.
Wedding gifts were displayed in the parlor. One which may still be seen in the Gates/Wallace/Truman dining room is the epergne. The “elegant silver epergne, very massive” was given to the couple by the groomsmen, O. H. Gentry, J. P. Scholl, J. A. McCoy, J. R. Cunningham, R. G. Wilson, Jr., and L. O. Schuler.
The Wallaces lived two miles away from the Gates house at 117 West Ruby Street (the home is extant). David Wallace purchased the property on July 28, 1882. It was in this house that the couple’s first child, Elizabeth (“Bess/Bessie”) Virginia, was born on February 13, 1885. The birth came four months after the death of George Wallace’s first child and became a namesake of both Madge’s mother and ill-fated sister.
As Deputy Recorder, David Wallace’s meager county paycheck put him in chronic debt. Beginning a family further aggravated his financial position. On November 14, 1885, nine months after the birth of his first
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child, Wallace conveyed the Ruby Street property in trust to John A. Sea and Sarah E. Pugsley to secure a $700 note. Wallace had one year to repay the loan at 10% annual interest.
David Wallace failed to meet the November, 1886, deadline, but did satisfy the trustee’s agreement six months later on May 14, 1887. Wallace had sold his property the month before, on April 11, 1887, to M. L. Hull. He took Madge, two-year-old Bessie, and five-week-old Frank Gates Wallace (born March 4, 1887) and moved into the Gates house at 219 North Delaware. For an unknown reason or length of time, the Wallace family lived in the Gates house. The 1889-90 city directory lists this residence as their address.
The Wallaces subsequently moved to 608 North Delaware, two blocks north of the Gates mansion. The two-story Victorian structure featured a large bay window topped by a cupola. While it had no basement, there were five out-buildings: a carriage house, stable, washhouse, woodhouse, and a privy decorated with a trellis. An imposing oak tree stood in the front yard where neighborhood children, including little Bessie, liked to climb out on its branches (the tree is extant at 610 North Delaware).
60: Bess remains at home after high school
Since high school graduation, Bessie Wallace stayed at home and helped her mother run the family home at 608 North Delaware. In 1900, Madge Wallace gave birth to her third son, David Frederick. Madge had never been blessed with good health and she depended heavily on her daughter’s assistance with the house, baby “Fred,” 14-year-old Frank, and 9-year-old George.
61: The Wallaces leave the Presbyterian Church for the Episcopal Church
Bessie and Frank Wallace were confirmed on May 8, 1903. Madge Wallace withdrew her membership from the First Presbyterian Church on May 6, 1906, to join the new congregation.
64-65: Bess assumes responsibility for her family after her father’s suicide
His despondency and suicide profoundly shocked his family. Madge Wallace and her children never discussed the tragedy. As the years passed and it faded from memory, it became a family secret. The suicide came to light only decades later -- not during the presidential years, but in a book published in the early 1960s.
After her husband’s burial in the Wallace family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery (not the Gates plot where she would be buried in 1952), Madge Gates Wallace took her four children to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where her uncle, Frank E. Gates, lived. David Wallace’s suicide caused his widow such grief and humiliation that she and her children remained in Colorado for a year. When the Wallaces returned to Missouri in 1904, they were welcomed into the spacious Gates mansion at 219 North Delaware. Their old home at 608 North Delaware was sold. Later it burned and the foundation was demolished.
David Wallace’s death placed a heavy responsibility on 18-year-old Bessie. With Madge Wallace plagued by painful sciatica and general poor health, the burden of looking after her two younger brothers, and raising Fred, Bessie became the head of the Wallace household. In addition to the advanced age and failing health of her grandparents, Bessie became, in effect, the mistress of 219 North Delaware. She held this unofficial position until her mother’s death five decades later when legal title to the property passed to Harry S and Bess Wallace Truman.
In 1905, Fred was five and Madge’s health was stable. Bessie enrolled in post secondary classes at Barstow School for girls.
74: MGW and her children settle into 219 North Delaware
Madge Wallace transformed the room above the kitchen into a sitting and sewing room for her own family. The Wallaces and their friends gathered there at night without disturbing the elderly Gates who usually retired early.
79: HST tries to win MGW’s approval
Courting at 219 North Delaware involved not only trying to win Bess’s hand, but the approval of Madge Wallace as well. Harry curried her favor early in the courtship by playing Madge’s piano in the parlor/music room. On Easter Sunday, April 16, 1911, Harry Truman apparently ate his first meal in the Gates/Wallace house after hearing Bess sing in the choir at Trinity Episcopal Church. He wrote:
I certainly did enjoy myself yesterday. I liked that church service very much. It is the first time I ever saw one on Easter. I am afraid I thanked your mother too much and you not enough for the pleasure of the day; but you know I appreciated the invitation from you both. I shall remember that dinner for a mighty long time.
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Harry did not always stay with the Nolands. In January 1913, Bess (probably with Madge’s approval) asked him to stay over.
85-86: Both MGW and her father become ill in 1918
In the spring of 1918, illness struck both Madge Wallace and her father, George P. Gates. On July 14, 1918, Harry wrote:
You’ve no idea how sorry I am to hear of your mother’s illness and I most sincerely hope you have succeeded in making her well again....
87: The Gates/Wallaces remain in the family home after George Gates’s death
The three trustees, however, were empowered “to sell any or all of my real estate” or
...to sell any of the personal estate.... Upon termination of the trust, the trustees shall have the power to sell any or all property necessary to make final distribution among the beneficiaries.
As the trustees were family members, it is certain that all three agreed to permit Elizabeth Gates and Madge Wallace’s family to continue living in the house.
89-91: The newlyweds move in with MGW
Following a honeymoon in Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit and Port Huron, Michigan, Harry and Bess Truman returned to the Gates/Wallace house to begin married life. Madge Wallace’s delicate health worsened that summer, compounded by chronic sciatica, a neuritis of the hip. With Bess unwilling to resign her responsibility to care for her mother, grandmother, and the family home, the Trumans decided to live there. From a financial standpoint, until Harry established himself in a profession, the arrangement seemed ideal. Living with Madge Wallace, however, was not easy for Harry. His mother-in-law’s strongly-held opinions and her belief that Bess should have married a more promising mate were a constant source of conflict. The couple’s daughter remembered:
My father, however, was not quite as tolerant of his opinionated mother-in-law. Perhaps he and Grandmother Wallace were never destined to get along under the same roof because she was from a town family and he from a country one. For whatever reason, while they never argued in public, there was much they disagreed upon in private.
96: MGW becomes the owner of 219 North Delaware
Madge Gates Wallace purchased the family home on October 4, 1924, from the trustees of her father’s estate.
106: MGW is burglarized
While Madge Wallace was sleeping in her first floor bedroom, the robber broke the lock on the door to the south side porch, crept inside, and stole Madge’s jewelry.
111: MGW spoiled MT
Madge Wallace, although strict, enjoyed spoiling her granddaughter. Whenever Margie tore any of her clothing she took it immediately to Grandmother Wallace to sew. A master at needlework, Madge could sew a garment so that it was impossible to detect the tear. Her skill often spared the youngster from the sting of Bess’s hairbrush.
112-113: Dinner in MGW’s house
The evening meal at Madge Wallace’s dining room table was the highlight of the day when the family all gathered together to eat. Mrs. Wallace sat at the head of the table (nearest the kitchen) while Harry Truman sat opposite her at the foot. Bess sat on one side while across from her was Fred Wallace. Margie sat in a high chair, and later a regular chair, between her mother and grandmother.
...Grandmother Truman was also very much of a lady but Grandmother Wallace was a spoiled lady in many ways, she had been all of her life. And she had been taken care of, and she had always been a member of the first family of the town. And my Grandmother Truman was a
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farm lady. She was a business woman. She ran her own farm and she had many hundreds of acres to run, and she did it. ...She was a lot tougher than my Grandmother [Wallace] was.
Although Madge Wallace was a vegetarian, meals often featured beef and chicken. Harry, “a very picky eater,” only ate small portions of meat and enjoyed vegetables, especially salads. His favorite desserts consisted of fruit.
After dinner, the family retired to the living room to read or listen to the radio. Madge’s Atwater Kent radio stood in one corner of the room. On the floor in front of the radio sat Margie doing her homework and occasionally asking her partners for assistance.
122: Another mention of MGW’s radio
The family stayed up all night listening to the returns [of HST’s senate campaign] on Madge Wallace’s radio.
127: The Wallace family in 1935
Fred Wallace, the youngest son of Madge Wallace, continued to live with his mother after he was graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia. He was married on July 27, 1930, and brought his new wife, Christine Meyer, to live in the Wallace/Truman house. Their son, David, was born in 1934. Madge Wallace’s former second floor bedroom with the front colored glass bay window became a nursery for David Wallace. In 1937, he shared his large room with a new sister, Marion. The Fred Wallace family lived at 219 North Delaware until 1942. An architect and engineer, Fred Wallace moved his family to Denver where he became the regional manager of the War Production Board in April 1945.
With Bess in Washington half the year, Madge Wallace had three sons and daughters-in-law to look after her. While the Gates fortune was only a memory, Madge lived comfortably off of the dividends of her Waggoner-Gates Milling Company stocks. Her financial stability was threatened in 1933 when the charter of the milling company expired. Unable to vote her company stock to seek another 50-year charter extension, her attorney, Rufus Burrus, filed suit and won his client the right to vote the stocks independently. With the extension successful, Madge appointed Frank Wallace as her representative at the mill.
130: MGW stays close to BWT
For the next decade (1935-1945), the Trumans lived in a series of apartments in the District of Columbia. Madge Wallace came to visit often, remaining for long periods of time.
135: HST uses BWT’s feelings for her mother to understand how he feels about his own
Martha Ellen and Mary Jane Truman were forced to abandon the farm and move into a bungalow in Grandview. The loss of the farm, which had been in the family for nearly a century, was a “bitter pill” for Harry to swallow. In an August, 1940, letter to Bess, he compared the loss of the Grandview farm to Madge Wallace losing her family home. “Imagine you mother being forced out of 219 North Delaware,” he lamented.
138: MGW’s routine after 1942
When the Fred Wallace family moved to Denver in 1942, Madge Wallace was left alone in her large house. Physically unable to care for the home herself, she closed up 219 North Delaware and moved to a small apartment on nearby Maple Avenue. She spent one winter there, came back to the home with the Trumans in the summer, then moved to Washington with them in the fall. For the next decade, the house stood closed and empty for extended periods of time, open only during the summer months and holidays.
139: MGW disapproves of MT’s career choice
Her special love was music and she was determined to pursue a career as a singer. Although Bess was “reserved” about it, Madge Wallace was openly critical, declaring that singing on the stage was no life for a lady. While the Wallaces were negative, the Trumans, especially “Mama Truman,” were openly enthusiastic.
151: MGW was in Washington when Roosevelt died
Following a half-hour with the Roosevelt cabinet, Harry Truman returned to the apartment to find Bess, Margaret, and Madge Wallace at the next-door neighbors sharing their ham and turkey dinner. It was Harry S Truman’s first meal as President of the United States.
161: MGW remains close to BWT
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Replaying a summer homecoming tradition which began in 1935, Bess arrived at 7:59 p. m., June 3, at the Missouri Pacific Railroad Depot with Madge Wallace and daughter Margaret. Two hundred people greeted them and they were then driven to Frank Wallace’s home.
169: Possible reason BWT was reluctant to have 219 North Delaware photographed, other than her own desire for privacy
Another explanation garnered from family friends involves Madge Wallace and her desire for privacy in her own home:
...the summer White House belongs to Mrs. Truman’s mother, Mrs. D. W. Wallace, and Mrs. Wallace is quite a dominant force in the Truman family.... Mrs. Wallace believes that a home is a home. It is not a place to be photographed on the inside. It is a place to live in.
174: HST’s and BWT’s families share Christmas dinner in 1946
President Truman, flying to Kansas City on Christmas Day, was delayed four hours by bad weather. When it became apparent he would be late, Martha Ellen and Mary Jane Truman canceled their Christmas dinner to come to the Wallace/Truman home to join the First Family, Madge Wallace, the Fred Wallace family, George and May Wallace, and Frank and Natalie Wallace.
178: The family attends MT’s graduation ceremonies
Bess and Margaret Truman, Madge Wallace, and George and Frank Wallace and their wives returned home on June 9.
180: A family picnic
Harry Truman was first at the food table to fill his plate, take a glass of ice tea, and return to his lawn chair. A plate was prepared for Madge Wallace and the family sat either at the tables or in lawn chairs with plates balanced on their laps.
184: MGW begins to divide her time between Denver and Washington
When they flew back to the capital, Mrs. Wallace did not accompany them. Madge Wallace remained behind with Frank and Natalie Wallace while 219 North Delaware was closed until Christmas. It was a rare occasion for Mrs. Wallace not to be living with the Trumans during the presidential period. Mrs. Truman insisted on caring for her ailing mother. According to one source:
When her brothers in Independence repeatedly offered to have the aging Mrs. Wallace live with them, Bess always replied, “It’s a daughter’s duty to look after her mother.”
187: Another trip to Denver by MGW
Bess and Margaret Truman, and Madge Wallace arrived home for the summer on June 30, and had a late evening dinner at May and George Wallace’s. Bess Truman accompanied her mother two weeks later to Denver (where Mrs. Wallace intended to stay the summer) and returned to the Summer White House on July 19.
188: MGW stays close to BWT
The Wallace/Truman house closed for the winter on October 15, 1947. Bess Truman left Independence for Washington by train with Madge Wallace.
196: The scene at the depot for the annual summer homecoming
As the crowd waited near the sign proclaiming “INDEPENDENCE, the Home of President Harry S. Truman,” Madge Wallace was the first to descend from the Pullman car. Vietta Garr, and Margaret and Bess Truman followed with their parcels.
223: BWT changes plans to return to Washington after a Labor Day visit to Independence by the President
Bess Truman did not return to the capital with her husband as planned. She stayed to care for Madge Wallace who was injured in a fall at the home the previous day. She departed on September 9, however, leaving Vietta Garr behind with her mother.
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234: BWT keeps MGW close
Bess Truman left Independence on July 28 [1950], leaving her mother behind while she visited her husband at Blair House and her daughter in New York. She returned on September 6, and departed east again on October 7 with Madge Wallace.
238: Another trip to Independence
Bess Truman and Madge Wallace returned to the Summer White House via the presidential railcar on May 29, 1951. A week later, following a telephone call to Independence, Harry wrote that he was concerned about both women’s health:
Your voice sounded as if you were very tired last night. Please get some rest. That’s what you are at home for. I am sorry Frank [Wallace] is under the weather. Hope he comes out of it.
If you want Dr. [Wallace] Graham, he can be there in three hours. You should take no chances with your mother. We have a doctor to keep us healthy and that is what he is assigned to do. So don’t hesitate if he’s needed.
240: Another trip back to Independence
On December 13, Bess Truman and Madge Wallace returned home for the Christmas holidays.
241: When BWT returns to Washington, her mother goes with her
Bess Truman and her mother left after the first week in January. The Wallace/Truman home was “closed again until the summer vacation.”
244: MGW’s health keeps BWT in Independence
By 10 a. m., “The Independence” whisked the President to Washington, while Bess Truman remained behind to care for her ailing mother.
246-247: The death and funeral of MGW
The deteriorating health of Mrs. Wallace had the entire family worried during the fall of 1952. The President wrote in his diary on November 24:
Bess’s mother is dying across the hallway. She was 90 years old August 4th.... Since last September Mother Wallace has been dying -- even before that, but we’ve kept doctors and nurses with her day and night and have kept her alive. We had hoped -- and still hope -- she’ll survive until Christmas. Our last as President.
In a White House press briefing on December 4, President Truman moved to squelch rumors that he and his wife would establish a home in the eastern United States. Announcing his intention to move back to Independence in January, the President added that he had decided to keep the high iron fence around the Summer White House. Former President Hoover’s experience was cited by the White House as the reason why the Truman fence would be retained.
The family had not planned on returning home until after Inauguration Day, spending their last Christmas in the White House, not in Missouri. The death of Madge Gates Wallace, at 11:35 a. m., December 5, 1952, in her White House bedroom necessitated a sad homecoming. Mrs. Wallace, age 90, succumbed to a stroke which progressed into pneumonia. With her at her death were Harry and Bess Truman, and Dr. Wallace Graham. On December 6, 1952, the family traveled by train back to Independence, arriving the following day. The funeral service, at 3 p.m., December 8, was private and was held at the Truman home. According to her wishes, Madge Wallace’s casket was placed in the parlor/music room and the minister of Trinity Episcopal Church presided. After the funeral, the casket was taken to Woodlawn Cemetery for interment in the Gates family plot.*
[Footnote] *In a final snub to her husband who committed suicide 49 years before, Madge chose to be buried with her family. David Willock Wallace rests beside his mother and father in a different section of the cemetery.
272: HST and BWT purchase 219 North Delaware
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Because their mother died intestate, Bess Truman and her three brothers had to settle Madge Wallace’s affairs between themselves. Frank Wallace, the eldest son, financial adviser, and conductor of the family’s interests in the Waggoner-Gates Milling Company, was appointed administrator of Madge Gates Wallace’s estate. Her four children agreed to divide her estate equally between them. There was no question which heir would continue [to] occupy the family home.
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Truman Roy Jenkins 1986

• A fair, but unremarkable source of information about MGW. She is referred to only in light of her relationship with Harry Truman, which is to be expected since the book is about him rather than her.
3: HST’s version of his first evening as president
‘My wife and daughter and mother-in-law were at the apartment of our next door neighbor.... They had a turkey dinner and they gave us something to eat. I had not had anything to eat since noon.’
14: MGW’s role in HST’s life
His [George P. Gates] daughter, Madge Gates Wallace, as she was later to be known, played only too large a part in the life of Harry Truman. She married a David W. Wallace, who had some of the qualities of Eleanor Roosevelt’s father.
15-16: MGW’s presence in HST’s life
The question which remains is why others did not press harder to carry off earlier this prize bride [Bess]. One reason may be that, after 1903, they realized they would have to take her mother with her, and that only Harry Truman had the uncomplaining devotion to accept this. The extent to which he did so turned out to be almost as unparalleled as was the length of the courtship. Mrs. Wallace survived nearly 34 years after the marriage and she lived every single one of them as part of the Truman household. Not only was this so in Independence. It was also so in Washington. She removed herself faithfully with the family. At the time of Truman’s accession to the presidency, Margaret Truman was sharing a bedroom with her in a small Connecticut Avenue apartment. She died in the White House a month after Eisenhower’s election. It was no political loyalty which kept her so close: she was constantly critical of her son-in-law, thought it wrong of him to sack such a fine military gentleman as General MacArthur, and would have been a natural Dewey voter in 1948. Harry Truman, for her, always remained one of nature’s ‘dirt farmers.’ Perhaps one of the reasons for his joyful return to Independence in January 1953, with the presidency behind him, was that he was at last entering his own house.
18: The Trumans’ wedding
In June he was married, in an Episcopal church -- the Wallace influence -- and moved into Mrs. Wallace’s fourteen-roomed house on North Delaware Street, Independence, which old [George] Porterfield Gates had built in 1867, and which was to remain Truman’s Jackson County home for the rest of his life.
32: Speculation on part of HST’s money problems
Even with this abstinence [not visiting Independence as often as he would have liked] he could not afford to pay more than about $150 a month [for an apartment]. And nearly all available apartments under this price were either too small (there was always his mother-in-law to be accommodated) or too disagreeable.
204-205: The full text of HST’s memorandum of late-1952
‘The White House is quiet as a church. I can hear the planes at the airport warming up. As always there is a traffic roar -- sounds like wind and rain through the magnolias.
‘Bess’s mother is dying across the hallway. She was ninety years old August 4th. Vivian’s mother-in-law passed on Saturday at eleven thirty. She also was ninety just a month after or before Mrs. Wallace. When you are sixty-eight death watches come often...
‘Since last September Mother Wallace has been dying -- even before that, but we’ve kept doctors and nurses with her night and day and have kept her alive. We had hoped -- and still hope -- she’ll survive until Christmas. Our last as president.
‘This old House is a most remarkable one. Started in 1792 by George Washington’s laying of the corner stone. Burned in 1814, by the British. Occupied by John and Abigail Adams...
‘Jefferson receiving diplomats in house slippers and dressing gown. Dolly Madison loading pictures and books and documents into a wagon and escaping just two jumps ahead of the British...
‘Then Monroe refinishing the rehabilitated old place with his own and some imported French furniture. And catching hell because he sent to Paris to buy things he could not obtain in the primitive U.S.A.!
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‘Old John Quincy Adams who went swimming in the Chesapeake and Potomac Canal every morning.... Then old Andy Jackson and his rough, tough backwoodsmen walking on the furniture with muddy boots and eating a 300 pound cheese, grinding it into the lovely Adams and Monroe carpets!’
Mrs. Wallace died on December 5th, the day after a rather grand farewell dinner with wives for the Cabinet, the senior White House staff and, almost inevitably, the Chief Justice. In spite of her thirty-three years of determined co-habitation, Truman seems genuinely to have mourned her. ‘She was a great lady,’ he wrote. ‘When I hear these mother-in-law jokes, I don’t laugh.’
The family took her out to Missouri to be buried, and then came back to Washington for a White House Christmas which could hardly be regarded as the end of a tradition, for it was only the second which they had spent in what Margaret Truman liked referring to as ‘the great white gaol.’
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Truman Richard Lawrence Miller 1986

• Miller speculates about Mrs. Wallace being a less-than-ideal relative, but he presents his remarks as possibilities rather than fact. This is a sign of things to come: Authors, even before Plain Speaking was challenged, were beginning to question the traditional image of Miller’s “impossible old woman.”
76: Quotes Ethel Noland’s remarks on the Trumans’ courtship, and relates information about David Wallace’s suicide and the return to 219 North Delaware Street
Mrs. Wallace was very neighborly and she loved to send things. Oh, we did back and forth, you know. She would send over a nice dessert or something, just to share it and here was a plate. Well, we hadn’t taken it back and I said, “Why don’t you take that plate home, it’s been around here a few days.”
“Well,” he said, “I certainly will.”
And Bess came to the door, and of course nothing could have made a bigger occasion than that, to see her again and talk to her.
This apparently was the first time Harry and Bess had seen each other since high school.
A lot had gone on since then. A couple of years after Bess graduated from high school her father committed suicide. The blow was compounded by sneers against her mother, innuendoes from townspeople and others that her mother’s inflated self-esteem drove Dave Wallace to desperation. There was also gossip that Dave Wallace had worried excessively about money. Why else would this county politician kill himself just as he was being mentioned for state office? Why else indeed. Years later a relative suggested that throat cancer had something to do with it, running up medical bills, every drop of saliva burning all day long, with Dave’s vocal cords squeezed tighter and tighter by the growth. A contemporary account blamed the death on “The insidious disease against which he battled for years...slowly creeping upward toward the brain,” but this seems a veiled reference to Dave’s alcoholism. Madge Wallace and her children then moved from their house at 610 North Delaware to the home of Madge’s parents at 219 North Delaware, across from Ethel Noland, a house later known as the Summer White House.
This is the house where Madge grew up as the daughter of George Gates, one of the wealthier men in Independence.
78-79: The relationship between HST & MGW
According to local gossip, Bess’s mother disapproved of Harry, but the gossip may have been wrong to a degree. Ethel Noland knew all the principals from the start, and declared, “There’s one myth that I would like to nail. And that is that Mrs. Wallace didn’t approve of that match.” Ethel continued, “She always liked him, and she favored the match from the very start. In fact, we weren’t sure whether she liked him better than Bess did or not.” Although Bess moved in high society, this was Independence high society. The Trumans knew the same people, and were among the town’s “good families.” Harry and Bess grew up only three or four blocks apart, went to the same schools, and had the same circle of friends until the Trumans left town. Much has been made of Bess’s grandfather’s wealth, but Harry’s grandfather had even more money. The social backgrounds of Harry and Bess were similar. There was no reason for Madge Wallace to disapprove of Harry any more than Bess’s other callers. Quite the contrary, Ethel Noland said, Mrs. Wallace “approved of him, because she knew that he had qualities that any girl could bank on in the long run.” Nonetheless, Harry has been portrayed as a man harried by a vicious mother-in-law who lived with him, making home life an ordeal, draining energy from his work. Part of this was true. Harry bubbled with warm anecdotes about relatives, but had nothing to say about his mother-in-law. Jonathan Daniels’s “authorized biography” of Harry omitted mention of her. This silence suggests something strange about that relationship. In a private memorandum Harry probably implied criticism of Madge Wallace when he complained of “my drunken brother-in-law, whom I’d had to employ on the [county patronage] job to keep peace in the family.” Margaret Truman has written of frequent bickering between Harry and Madge. So that much of the gossip was true. A White House servant recorded a revealing story about the home atmosphere, an incident when General MacArthur was relieved of command: “When Mrs. Wallace persisted, and asked from her sickbed, ‘Bess, why did Harry fire that nice man?’, Mrs. ‘T’ refused to discuss it. Instead, she threw back her shoulders...and marched out of the room.” Bess disliked “to hear her mother criticize the President in private.”
317: The unwanted times spent apart by HST & BWT and the possible cause
Family correspondence over the years shows many references to things being fine at home, that Harry shouldn’t worry about Margie hurting her arm last night, that Bess is sure Margie must understand deep down that her father
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loves her even if he isn’t around much. Truman's absences caused friction, but they weren’t all initiated by him. During the Senate years Bess spent great amounts of time, months at a stretch, living apart from her husband. Harry sent her numerous letters telling of his loneliness and practically pleading with her to come back. One gets the impression that the marriage was under a strain. When Bess was living with Harry in Washington he often had little time for her. He found her presence a comfort, but one can see how she might have felt ignored. Though she had looked forward to life in Washington when Harry was first elected to the Senate, Bess eventually decided to spend enormous blocks of time living in Independence. There she had a circle of friends to ease any loneliness. Another factor may have been her mother, an exasperating person with a seemingly untoward hold on her daughter. Madge Wallace may have devised excuses to keep Bess in Independence. Madge may well have thrived on attempts to throw discord into her daughter’s marriage, and Bess may have been more concerned about mollifying her mother than about any grief such mollification caused Harry.
337: Note about Senator Truman’s private income
Truman also supported Bess’s mother, whose reputation for personal wealth was apparently as inflated as her ego.
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David McCullough Oral History 1989

• McCullough had spent a great deal of time researching Truman for his biography by the time this interview was conducted. His speculations are interesting.
24: MGW’s treatment of HST
SHAVER: Speaking of family influences, how much did Madge Wallace fuel his ambitions and achievements?
MCCULLOUGH: Well, it’s hard to know. The stories about Madge not thinking that Harry was good enough for Bess are true. I have been told by people who worked in the White House, who were there then, that Mr. Truman would go in and say good morning to her every morning, President Truman, and that she wouldn’t speak to him. And yet he was never known to ever have said anything derogatory about her and did not like mother-in-law jokes, didn’t like people to tell mother-in-law jokes.
?FEMALE: Nineteenth-century.
MCCULLOUGH: That’s right, exactly. It would have been disrespectful to his wife to have said anything about her.
30-32: Speculation as to who was in charge at 219 North Delaware Street
MCCULLOUGH: And then when I first went in the house, what surprised me was how little he had to say about ... you know, one little place where he could have his books and his chair and his music. But everything else was just as I expect as Mrs. Wallace wanted it. Who paid the taxes on the house? Do you know that? Did anybody ever determine that?
SHAVER: I don’t know whether we have or not, no.
MCCULLOUGH: It would be very interesting to know that. I suspect she was paying the taxes, his mother-in-law. I would that that ...
SHAVER: Yes, _________, but I don’t know for sure.
MCCULLOUGH: Well, you know, he always referred to it as the Gates house, which I think is extremely interesting. Now, that may just be more of a habit, of course. I think he always felt he was the guest in her house, and I think she was paying the bills and paying the taxes. I may be wrong.
SHAVER: Well, that would seem to conflict with at least the notion that Margaret had said, and my notion of it from what few letters I’ve read that she had written, that typically Victorian lady who essentially left those things to the male sphere, and ...
MCCULLOUGH: Yes, well, one thing that’s interesting to me. When Harry Truman worked on the farm -- and of course he was working out there until he was in his early thirties -- he did everything. He could do everything. As near as I could tell, he never lifted a finger to put up screens or cut the lawn or any of that kind of thing. And I’m sure, I feel certain, that Mrs. Wallace was saying that isn’t what the man of this house does. You know, you have an employee that does that, a servant who does that, and it would be unseemly for you to be out there painting the back porch.
?FEMALE: That would kind of go along with some of the things we talk about, that Mr. Truman wasn’t the handyman around the house but brother George who lived next door was the one who came over.
MCCULLOUGH: Oh, yes.
?FEMALE: And put some of the ______ up and cut the legs off of Margaret’s chair and kind of did the ... You know, if something needed to go to the attic, he was the one who took it up and that kind of thing.
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MCCULLOUGH: Yes. I have a wonderful, wonderful interview that I did with a woman who lives in Nebraska who lived in a house nearby, who came over to play every day with Margaret, of what it was like.
SHAVER: One of the ______ sisters.
MCCULLOUGH: That’s right, and it’s marvelous what she remembers of life in the house, and she said that it absolutely was always, in her view, Mrs. Wallace’s house.
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Harry S. Truman: Life on the Family Farms Robert Ferrell 1991

• Excellent analysis of MGW via HST’s letters to Bess during their courtship.
76-71: Bess remains at home to help her mother
It was on one of these visits, after he stayed overnight in the Noland parlor, that he came into the kitchen of the house at 216 North Delaware to discover that Mrs. Wallace, Bess’s mother -- they lived across the street at 219 -- had sent over a cake; someone needed to return the plate.
It was a great opportunity. He had met Bess in 1890. He liked to say later that he had fallen in love with her and never really liked another girl. In school they had been in the same classrooms, he had carried her books, and they had studied Latin together at the Noland house. After high school graduation in 1901 they seem to have seen each other no more; the Truman family moved to Kansas City and then to the farm. Bess remained at home to help her mother after her father’s suicide in 1903.
91. HST’s attempts to prove himself to MGW
Meanwhile the courtship had inspired Harry Truman to prove himself as a farmer with a future, which led to the ventures that eventually affected the mortgage. The proving almost beyond question was not for the sake of Bess but her mother. Mrs. Wallace was the daughter of an Independence man of means, George Porterfield Gates, who years before had joined with a partner to establish a mill that produced Queen of the Pantry Flour, “the best biscuit and cake flour in the world.” From this enterprise came a sizable income. In the 1880s, Gates enlarged his house at 219 North Delaware, and behind its pleasant Victorian facade it was possible to count seventeen [sic] rooms. At the same time Grandfather Young lived in a colonial-style country mansion and owned two thousand acres and probably could have bought and sold George Gates. But that was beside the point. Mrs. Wallace’s experience with her improvident and alcoholic husband persuaded her that her only daughter -- Bess had three younger brothers -- should marry someone of means. Harry Truman therefore received inspiration to prove himself.
93: HST’s proving
During these attempts to impress Bess’s mother and win her daughter, Harry Truman sought to persuade Uncle Harrison to “let loose” of some money so that the two, nephew and uncle, might make a speculation.
98-99: MGW’s approval of Harry and Bess’s marriage
The war gave him an excuse (which he hardly needed, as he had been discovering them for years) to urge Bess to marry him. This time Mrs. Wallace could not ask him to demonstrate that he could support Bess. With Mrs. Wallace’s blessing the two agreed that they would tie the knot as soon as the war was over.
123: HST’s failures in his attempts to impress MGW
Harry Truman failed every time he tried to impress Bess’s mother, Mrs. Wallace. Farm raffles, Texas land, lead and zinc, oil -- all failed.
125

Truman David McCullough 1992

• A book long on factual minutia, but short on analysis. Still, by reviewing this remarkable collection of facts, one can begin to develop a picture of MGW’s personality. Again, keep in mind Plain Speaking was still unchallenged.
70 -- David Wallace's suicide and the effects on MGW
He [David Wallace at the time of his suicide] was forty-three years old and had, in the words of the Jackson Examiner, "an attractiveness about him that was natural and spontaneous." In addition to his wife, Madge Gates Wallace, and Bessie age eighteen, he was survived by three sons, ranging in age from sixteen to three. He left no note.
"Why should such a man take his own life?" asked the Examiner. "It is a question we who loved him are unable to answer...." Included also in the story was the gruesome detail that the bullet had passed through his head and landed in the bathtub.
Older friends and neighbors in Independence remembered the wedding of Madge Gates to David Wallace twenty years earlier as one of the most elegant occasions in the town's history. It had been a brilliant moonlit night, the lawn at the Gates mansion ablaze with Chinese lanterns. Wedding presents in the parlor included oil paintings and an after-dinner coffee service in silver and china. David Wallace was the son of one of the old settlers from Kentucky, but until his marriage had had no wealth or social standing to speak of. He was a courthouse politician. Yet the importance of the Gates family more than compensated and David Wallace, many believed, was the handsomest man in Independence. He was like the elegant small-town figure in Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem "Richard Cory," who "fluttered pulses" with his good looks and who also "one calm summer night,/Went home and put a bullet through his head."
What the Examiner did not mention, but that everyone knew, was that David Wallace had a drinking problem -- often he had to be carried home by friends -- and most efforts to fathom the tragedy came back to that. Or to gossip about money troubles, the view being he was badly in debt "and didn't see any way out."
If the Trumans had known shame during John's financial downfall, it was little compared to what the family of a suicide would experience. The Trumans had moved away. Madge Gates, with Bessie and the younger children, left for Colorado Springs, not to return for a year. No one close to the family would ever discuss the subject except in strictest confidence. It was not something "decent people" wished to talk about.
81 -- The courtship
He [HST] was invited to Sunday dinner and sat politely with Bessie and her very formal mother, her brothers, and Grandmother and Grandfather Gates, as a black servant passed dishes. In the parlor afterward he played the piano for them.
87 -- The courtship
He [HST] was pleased to learn that her mother admired his piano playing. (Mrs. Wallace herself was considered an accomplished pianist. In her youth she had studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory.)
91-92 -- MGW's acceptance of HST
[Letter from HST to BWT before their marriage] "Do you suppose your mother'll care for me well enough to have me in her family?"
This last point was a large question indeed, for Madge Wallace remained, as would be said, a virtual "prisoner of shame" over her husband's suicide and clung to Bess as a figure of strength greater than her own. She needed Bess quite as much as John Truman needed Harry. As the only daughter of an important family, Bess would have been a guarded "prize" even under normal circumstances. The prospects for a debt-ridden, farm-boy suitor would have been extremely remote, however persistent or well mannered he might be.
"Mrs. Wallace wasn't a bit in favor of Harry," remembered one of the Noland family, all of whom were strongly on Harry's side. "And she says, 'You don't want to marry that farmer boy, he is not going to make it anywhere.' And so she didn't push it at all. She kind of tried to prevent it...."
Every call Harry made at 219 North Delaware Street could only have been a reminder of what distances remained between his world and hers. The etched glass in the front door, the plum-colored Brussels carpets, the good china and heavy lace curtains at the long parlor windows, the accepted use of silver dessert forks, the absence of any sign that survival meant hard physical labor day in, day out, the whole air of privacy, of unruffled comfort and stability, reflected a way of life totally apart from anything in his experience. ("We have moved around quite a bit and always the best people are hardest to know," he once told Bess defensively.) Had he only to overcome the
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obvious differences in their station, he would have had an uphill haul, as he would have said. But the problem was greatly compounded by how Madge Wallace felt toward anyone or any cause that threatened to take Bess from her.
"Yes, it is true that Mrs. Wallace did not think Harry was good enough for Bess," a member of the Wallace circle would comment with a smile sixty years afterward, her memory of it all quite clear. "But then, don't you see, Mrs. Wallace didn't think any man was good enough for Bess."
145 -- HST moves into the Wallace complex
It [the honeymoon] was all too brief. Worried over her mother's health -- Madge Wallace suffered from sciatica, among other real and imagined complaints -- Bess felt they must return to Independence sooner than planned. As her mother wished, they moved into 219 North Delaware, taking Bess's room at the top of the stairs on the south side. The immediate household now consisted of Bess, Harry, Madge, Fred, who was a college student and his mother's pet, and the elderly Mrs. Gates, who had a room on the first floor off the front parlor. In back of the house, beyond the driveway, in what was formerly the garden, two small, one-story bungalows had been built, facing Van Horne Boulevard, one each for brothers Frank and George and their wives. Thus the whole family was together still in a "kind of complex," under the watchful eye of Mother Madge Wallace, a neat, straight little woman with a rather sweet expression, her hair done up in a knot, who still wore an old-fashioned velvet choker. Among the neighbors, she was perceived as possibly the most perfect lady in town and "a very, very difficult person."
Bess considered the arrangement temporary. She and Harry would stay only long enough for her mother to become accustomed to the idea that she was married. Harry moved in with his clothes, a few books, and a trunk full of his Army things, which was nearly all he owned.
150 -- HST, MGW, and Eddie Jacobson
The goodwill and mutual respect between Harry and Eddie Jacobson, meantime, seemed not to suffer from the strain they were under, though it remained at heart a business friendship. Eddie's wife sensed a certain distance between the Trumans and the Jacobsons that she took to be a sign of anti-Semitism among Harry's in-laws. The Wallaces, she said, were considered aristocracy, and under the circumstances the Trumans could not afford to have Jews in their house. But then Harry seldom if ever brought any of his friends home to North Delaware Street. The privacy of Madge Wallace's world was one thing, the world without was another, and so it would remain.
161 -- HST decides to run for county judge
What opinions Bess had, what her mother was saying privately, or Mamma Truman thought, are not recorded.
169 -- The birth of Margaret Truman
About noon, Harry was told to call the doctor, Charles E. Krimminger, a big red-faced man remembered for his huge hands -- "hands as big as a frying pan" -- who came in covered with snow and went directly upstairs. A practical nurse, Edna Kinnaman, arrived soon after and would remember Mrs. Wallace and Harry waiting patiently through the afternoon in the upstairs hall, the very proper Mrs. Wallace seated on a cedar chest, Harry in a chair looking amazingly composed.
Bess, according to Nurse Kinnaman, "got along beautifully." It was a normal birth. The baby, a girl, weighed 7 1/2 pounds. "We didn't have to announce it [when the baby arrived]...because they heard her cry and the grandmother and daddy came into the room." It was five o'clock. Harry called his mother and sister and told them the name would be Mary Margaret, after Mary Jane and Mrs. Wallace. The wife of a friend who saw him soon afterwards said "his face just beamed."
There had not been a baby in the old house since Madge Wallace's own childhood.
176 -- HST and nepotism
He also put his brother Vivian on the payroll, as purchasing agent for the county homes, and hired Fred Wallace, his youngest brother-in-law, as county architect, primarily to appease Bess and her mother. Fred, like his father, was a drinker and a worry, and still the apple of his mother's eye.
187 -- A neighbor's impressions of the Truman/Wallace household
To little Sue Ogden, the big house where her playmate Margaret Truman lived was a magnificent sanctuary secure from the troubles of Depression times. Margaret's Grandmother Wallace was an elegant lady who wore her old-fashioned clothes with style. Whenever Margaret's father came home from a trip, he brought her a present. "She
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had everything she wanted," Sue remembered. Judge Truman always looked dressed up and there was a black servant, Vietta Garr, who did the cooking and waited on the table.
189 -- MGW as compared to Mamma Truman
At dinner, Grandmother Wallace sat at the head of the table, Father at the other end, Margaret sat with her mother on one side, with Uncle Fred opposite. Dinner was served at 6:30. There was a white linen tablecloth, linen napkins, and good silver. Father did the carving, and "beautifully," according to Vietta Garr. The atmosphere was calm and proper, always. Grandmother Wallace did her hair a little differently for dinner and put on a fresh dress. "My manners were expected to be perfect," Margaret remembered. If her father and uncle discussed politics, her mother occasionally joined in, but never her grandmother, who did not care for politicians, or politics. "Her presence was very much felt. Even though she didn't talk a great deal."
The food, ordered each morning by Madge Wallace by telephone, was straightforward and ample -- baked Virginia ham, standing rib roast, warm bread and old-fashioned biscuits, baked sweet potatoes, fresh vegetables in season, cakes, pies, peach cobbler. Harry particularly liked corn bread and Missouri sorghum. His favorite dessert was angel food cake, according to Vietta Garr, who, in all, would spend thirty-six years with the Truman family. "Yes, I spoiled him," she would say, "but he was always such a nice man."
On Sundays, Harry, Bess, and Margaret would drive to Grandview for a big, midday fried chicken dinner at the farm, where, as Margaret remembered, the atmosphere was "entirely different." It was not just that her father looked forward to these visits, but her mother as well. "She liked Mamma Truman immensely." Mamma was "full of spice," with opinions on nearly everything, including politics. The difference between this spry little "country grandmother" and the one in Independence was extreme. With Mamma Truman one felt in touch with pioneer times, with a native vigor and mettle that seemed ageless. Mamma still went rabbit hunting with Margaret's boy cousins, Vivian's sons. Once when she offered food to a tramp at the back porch and the tramp complained the coffee wasn't hot enough, she took the cup, went inside, and promptly returned with a shotgun. He could be on his way, she said, or she would warm more than his coffee for him.
190 -- HST living with his mother-in-law
Interestingly, for all his years on the farm, for all he knew about tools and odd jobs, he did no repairs around the house, never cut the lawn or put up screens. Undoubtedly, his mother-in-law had some say in this. Such work was for the yard man.
"It never seemed like the Truman house," Sue Ogden remembered. "It was so clearly Mrs. Wallace's house. And she was clearly in charge of everything about it."
Another of Margaret's childhood friends, Mary Shaw, would remember hearing her parents say, "How does Harry put up with that?"
"It was very hard on my father," Margaret would concede long afterward, while showing a visitor through the house. "You know, my father was a very quiet, nontemperamental man at home. He got along. I mean, he made it his business to get along...because he loved my mother and this was where she wanted to live."
229 -- BWT's pressure to remain with her mother
Margaret, who had grown taller and even more spindly, was attending Gunston Hall, a private school for girls, which was another financial worry for Harry. Independence, however, remained "home" for Margaret, as for Bess, who felt the constant pressure of her mother's need for her. Madge Wallace, who still believed Bess could have done better in the way of a husband, gave no sign of interest in Harry or his career.
The long separations grew no easier. "I just can't stand it without you," he wrote to Bess as the new session got under way in 1937. She was not only Juno, Venus, and Minerva to him, he wrote, but Proserpina, too, and urged her to look that up. Proserpina, as Margaret would remember ever after, was a goddess who spent half of each year in Hades with her husband Pluto, separated from her grieving mother.
304 -- MGW in Denver
Truman was staying at the President Hotel in Kansas City [before he left for the 1944 Democratic convention]. Bess, Margaret, and Madge Wallace were visiting Fred Wallace at his new home in Denver.
334 -- MGW moves in with the Trumans in Washington
He, Bess, and Margaret were still living in the same five-room apartment at 4701 Connecticut Avenue at the same $120-a-month rent. The only difference was that his mother-in-law, Mrs. Wallace, had also moved in.
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"Harry looks better than he has for ages -- is really putting on weight," Bess wrote to Ethel Noland. "Marg has gone to a picture show and Harry to a poker party," she told Ethel in another letter. "Mother is practically asleep in her chair -- so it's very peaceful."
385 -- MGW moves into the White House with the Trumans
Working with J. B. West and a Kansas City decorator, Bess was transforming the private quarters of the White House. Rooms were scrubbed, painted, furniture repaired or discarded. New furniture was purchased (mostly reproduction antiques). New curtains and draperies were installed, walls hung with painting (landscapes primarily) borrowed from the National Gallery. Bess's mother moved in, taking a guest room over the North Portico. Reathal Odum, from Truman's Senate office, who was to serve both as Bess's personal secretary and as a companion for Mrs. Wallace, was given a room beside Mrs. Wallace.
397 -- The family leaves HST behind in Washington
On Saturday, June 2 [1945], after less than a month in residence, Bess, her mother, and Margaret had packed and left Washington by train to spend a long summer in Independence. Madge Wallace was not happy with life in the White House, nor was Bess. "We are on our way home, underlined, four exclamation points," wrote Margaret, who, to her father, seemed in a very unsatisfactory humor. "I hope -- sincerely hope," he wrote privately, "that this situation (my being President) is not going to affect her adversely."
568 -- Quote in which Margaret recalls her first singing performance
I was aware that my father was glued to a radio in the Navy Commandant's quarters in Key West; that my mother was listening in the White House, that Mamma Truman was listening from her bed in Grandview, and that Grandmother Wallace, who didn't have much use for the stage, was listening critically in Independence. I couldn't let anybody down.
574 -- Comparison between BWT and MGW
To nearly everyone she [BWT] seemed "the perfect lady," the phrase used so often to describe her mother.
657 -- People's expectations of the outcome of the 1948 election
At Washington dinner parties, as Bess Truman had heard, the talk was of who would be in the Dewey Cabinet. Some prominent Democrats in Washington were already offering their homes for sale. Even the President's mother-in-law thought Dewey would win.
774 -- On the night of the call about the Korean invasion
Dinner was called by Vietta Garr at 6:30. Truman and Mrs. Wallace took their customary places at either end of the table. Margaret would recall a "very pleasant family dinner," after which they moved out onto a newly expanded, screened porch off the kitchen, where they sat talking, "small talk," until dark, when everyone moved back inside to the study.
809 -- On the afternoon of the 1950 assassination attempt
Truman joined Bess and Madge Wallace for a quiet lunch, then went upstairs for a nap. At 2:50 he was scheduled to leave for Arlington Cemetery, to speak at the unveiling of a statue of British Field Marshal Sir John Dill, a member of the Combined Chiefs of Staff during World War II, who had died in Washington in 1944 as a result of his wartime service.
Because of the heat, Truman took off his clothes and stretched out on the four-poster bed in his underwear, the window open.
The rest of the house grew quiet. Bess and her mother had retired to another room. Downstairs, the front door stood open to the street, the screen door latched. On duty in the comparative cool of the front hall was Secret Service Agent Stuart Stout.
914 -- Truman's reaction upon the death of Madge Wallace
Upstairs at the White House a death watch had begun. In the bedroom across from Truman's study, ninety-year-old Madge Gates Wallace lay in a coma.
"The White House is quiet as a church," Truman wrote in his diary at five in the morning, November 24. "I can hear the planes at the airport warming up. As always there is a traffic roar -- sounds like wind and rain through the magnolias.
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"Bess's mother is dying across the hallway ...."
She had never been an easy person to get along with. Even as a resident of the White House she had let it be known in small ways to some of the servants and staff that she still thought Harry Truman not quite good enough for her Bess. But Truman, who had never been known to say anything critical about her, even by inference, was greatly saddened. "Since last September Mother Wallace has been dying ... but we've kept doctors and nurses with her day and night and have kept her alive. We had hoped -- and still hope -- she'll survive until Christmas. Our last as President." When she died, on December 5, he wrote, "She was a grand lady. When I hear these mother-in-law jokes I don't laugh."
928 -- The estate of Madge Wallace
The estate of the supposedly well-to-do Madge Wallace, not including the house, totaled all of $33,543.60, which after being divided four ways among Bess and her brothers, left Bess with a cash inheritance of $8,385.90. Indeed, among the reasons why they had come back to Independence and the old house was that financially they had little other choice.
The town buzzed with speculation over where the Trumans might live now, whether they would stay on in "the old Wallace place," which to many seemed unlikely for someone who had been President of the United States.
130

Choosing Truman Robert Ferrell 1994

• A book providing an in-depth analysis of a single episode of HST’s life. The single reference to MGW refers to the influential role played by MGW in the Trumans’ lives.
60 -- Authors remarks on possible family repercussions of HST's acceptance of the VP nomination in terms of David Wallace's suicide
Bess Truman had never told her daughter about this family matter. And how to deal with her aged mother, Mrs. Wallace, then living with the Trumans in Washington?
Margaret's biography of her mother is an attractive book and contains many shrewd insights. No student of her father's rise to the presidency can ignore what she has written about her mother and, necessarily, her mother's relation to her father's career. But the suicide issue is unbelievable. Would Truman's wife, married back in a time when wives announced they would love, honor, and obey, have refused her husband the vice-presidency, which meant the presidency? Could not Mrs. Wallace, a sweet, careful old lady, who had made a career out of remembering the way in which her husband died, have put her feelings aside, just once?
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Harry S. Truman: A Life Robert Ferrell 1994
• Ferrell’s full-length biography of HST. At this point, this book provides the best analysis of HST’s and MGW’s relationship by a secondary source, possibly because the Plain Speaking tapes had been made public the year before, and Ferrell was one of the first to hear them. Nevertheless, Ferrell puts a great deal of faith in the remarks of Ardis Haukenberry. Still, his discussion (76-78) is fair, balanced, and referenced.
14: Remarks concerning the young MGW and the type of attention she may have received from her parents
Down Delaware at 610 lived the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gates, Madge Gates Wallace, prettiest of the three Gates daughters -- Margaret (Madge), Maud, and Myra. Their adoring father contrived a decorative picture for his flour sacks; beaded curtain, palm, and young lady with a bustle, supposedly a composite of the daughters but looking mostly like Madge. Madge’s husband, David W. Wallace -- a handsome man, with sideburns -- was county recorder and later held an appointment in the customs office in Kansas City. The Wallace family eventually included four children, of whom Bessie was the oldest.
50: Another version of the “cake plate story”
The occasion by which Bess and Harry met was typical of the time. Bess’s mother, Mrs. Wallace, had sent over a cake to the Noland family across the street -- their house was at 216 North Delaware, opposite the Gates house at 219. By chance Harry Truman was visiting the Nolands, Aunt Ella and her daughters, Ethel and Nellie. He had spent the night in their parlor, and the next morning he came out into the kitchen, saw the plate from the cake, and heard his aunt explain that it had come from the Wallaces and needed to be returned.
**51: MGW’s initial hesitation about HST
The reason for the delay [of Harry and Bess’s marriage] was essentially Bess’s mother, who desired her future son-in-law to be a man of means. In later years critics would write of how she opposed the marriage of Bess to a farmer. But it was more than likely not his occupation she objected to: from all accounts of the time, she enjoyed the farmer’s frequent presence at meals in the Gates house. She and her four children, however, were living with Grandfather and Grandmother Gates; everything they received came from them. Before that, her husband had accepted money from her father. She therefore must have been extremely sensitive of her dependence, and did not want Bess ever to have such an experience. The result was a series of efforts to impress Bess’s mother that he, a Jackson County farmer, possessed enough money to marry her daughter. These efforts consumed almost as much time as Farmer Harry spent in courting Bess.
62: Another version of HST early morning telephone call to Bess before leaving for France
He then explained why, passing through Kansas City, he had called her at 5:00 A.M. Mrs. Wallace had come to the phone and seems to have been irritated, although Bess was pleased.
74: HST’s role at 219 North Delaware, and the role the house played in the Trumans lives
To be sure, it was Mrs. Wallace’s house, not that of the bride and groom, but that was a nominal matter; Mrs. Wallace was not wealthy, and from the beginning it is probably that Truman was in fact the head of the household, paying the bills through his wife. Writers looking at the way in which the former captain of the AEF, the erstwhile farmer from Grandview, moved into his mother-in-law’s house have sometimes offered an almost cramped view of the circumstances, which in fact must have seemed quite spacious.
As it happened, Delaware Street -- in which Truman and his wife were to live for sixteen years without interruption -- became the familial home base from which they departed only for temporary reasons. In 1935 when Truman became a US senator they began a life of back-and-forth, moving to Washington for half years at first, and then during World War II closing the house while Mrs. Wallace came to Washington to stay with them in their Connecticut Avenue apartment. After the war, even with residence in the White House, Bess and Mrs. Wallace again alternated from one “big house” to the other, never quite settling down in the capital city.
76-78: The relationship between HST & MGW
It was said by biographers and other observers that marriage brought not merely Bess but her mother, that he found himself with a domineering mother-in-law, with whom he never got along and whose presence created trouble during the rest of Mrs. Wallace’s life, until her death in 1952. There is some evidence to that effect. In 1948, when giving a speech before one hundred thousand farmers in Dexter, Iowa -- one of the principal occasions of that campaign, which may have done more than any speech elsewhere to elect him president in his own right -- he told a mother-in-law joke. According to the joke, a man was attending the funeral service of his wife. After the
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church service, the undertaker inquired if the man would ride down to the cemetery in the same car with his mother-in-law. The man said, “Well, I can do it, but it’s just going to ruin the whole day for me.” Was he talking about Mrs. Wallace? She may have told a reporter that year that she would vote for Governor Thomas E. Dewey. The president’s sister-in-law, May Wallace, related years later that when Harry Truman came back from the army he wanted to return to the farm, but Bess hated it there and conspired with her mother, who wanted her at 219 North Delaware. According to May, Mrs. Wallace feigned illness, and Bess undertook to care for her, forcing her husband to take up residence in his mother-in-law’s house. Mrs. Wallace appears to have kept her eye on everyone. May said that her sister-in-law, Natalie Wallace, who lived next to May’s house (the two lived in bungalows directly behind 219), greatly disliked the fact that Mrs. Wallace wanted to supervise her every move. One day May noticed Natalie passing her house. Asked where she was going, Natalie answered: “To Kansas City. But I’m not going to get the streetcar at the corner because if I do, Mother Wallace is going to come out of the house and ask me where I’m going. I’m not planning to do anything wrong. I just want to go someplace without telling her about it!”
Margaret Truman, who should have been able to divine this situation, has related that Mrs. Wallace did not get along with her son-in-law, and that although there was no public dissension, disagreement in private was frequent.
When Mrs. Wallace’s father died during World War I, he had left his wife an annuity that lasted until her death a few years later, and divided the rest of his estate among his five children, giving Mrs. Wallace $23,247.39. It was no tremendous amount of money, and it would have to last for the rest of her life, which proved to be a long time. Margaret believes that she had no financial sense whatsoever and gradually spent the money on what pleased her, including the education of her son Fred at the University of Missouri. When the haberdashery was closing its doors in April 1922, she made no effort to help, and was planning a trip with Fred to the East Coast as soon as he finished the school year. But then this sounds as if she was thoughtless rather than thoughtful, unthinking about, rather than actively disliking, her son-in-law.
Mrs. Wallace owned the house on North Delaware, which she purchased from the trustees of her father’s estate. (This means she did not retain for long the $23,247.39 she inherited, spending $10,000 or $15,000 buying the house.) When she died in 1952 her will bequeathed it to her four children and forced the then president of the United States, who by that time had lived in the house thirty-three years, to buy out the brothers so he could retire; the house should have been his long since, for Mrs. Wallace’s inheritance would have run out years before, and he had been supporting her. Again, one suspects she did not think much about this. [Ferrell contradicts himself on these remarks concerning the existence (or lack thereof) of Mrs. Wallace’s will. See later in his book under page 384.]
Truman never spoke openly against his mother-in-law, nor wrote critically about her privately. On one occasion, he took pains to set down his disgust with mother-in-law jokes, the Dexter, Iowa, incident notwithstanding. Early one morning in 1952, as she lay dying just across the hall from him in the White House, he sat at his desk and wrote how she was slipping away, and how she had been a good mother-in-law.
Perhaps the best explanation of Mrs. Wallace’s relations with Harry Truman over the years came from Ardis Haukenberry, niece of Ethel and Nellie Noland, daughter of their sister Ruth, who had married and moved away. After the aunts and her mother passed on, she went back to Independence and spent her last years in the Noland house at 216 North Delaware. Ardis told the present writer that Mrs. Wallace felt her son-in-law was not good enough for Bess. She liked him, seldom disagreed with him, enjoyed his presence when he was courting Bess, and welcomed him as a returning veteran, but for years believed Bess could have done better.
Here must be the truth. She saw him as a man who could not succeed at anything. According to Ardis, Mrs. Wallace never anticipated her son-in-law would become president of the United States. In this regard one recalls the remark of a newspaperman and television reporter in Kansas City, Randall Jessee, who was close to Truman during the years of retirement and became the family spokesman at the time of the president’s death. He may have talked to Truman about Mrs. Wallace. Jessee’s remark was another mother-in-law joke: “Behind every great man there’s a loyal wife and a surprised mother-in-law.”
86: HST’s lack of property during the 1920s may have been to his advantage
The judgment of 1929 permitted seizure of real estate and bank account, but he appeared to have possessed neither. His mother-in-law owned the Independence house, and he may not have had bank accounts except in unknown places.
92: Remark suggesting the Wallace’s did not own a piano before HST bought one for Margaret
He found the piano interesting but gave it up. When he moved into Mrs. Wallace’s house at 219 North Delaware, there was no piano in the house for thirteen years.
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102: HST and property tax
The opposition circulated a brochure showing that Truman did not pay any real estate tax -- true enough, because Mrs. Wallace owned the house.
106: The Trumans name their daughter (in part) for MGW
The most important event was the birth of Mary Margaret Truman (Mary for Judge Truman’s sister, Margaret for Mrs. Wallace) in 1924.
107-108: Evenings at 219 North Delaware during the 1930s
The family all lived together with Grandmother Wallace and her youngest son, Fred, in the big house at 219. Margaret has drawn an attractive picture of them there each evening, month after month, year after year. For dinner they all ate in the dining room, with her father at one end at the table, Grandmother Wallace at the other. During daytime the grandmother wore her iron-gray hair in a bun at the back of her neck, but for dinner she put her hair up on top of her head and changed her dress. “Whenever I was seated next to her at the dinner table I was the best-behaved little girl in Independence,” Margaret wrote. Afterward everyone adjourned to the living room. There, in the far-right-hand corner, the grandmother sat in a rocking chair, straight as a ramrod, shawl around her shoulders, doing needlework. Margaret’s father and mother read -- her father was never without a book. She herself did homework. The grandmother indulged Margaret and Uncle Fred by allowing a tiny mouse, which came out of its hole at night, to caper back and forth on the rocker of her chair while the Atwater Kent radio played music from station WLW in Cincinnati.
114-115: HST takes stock of his situation at the end of his second term as county judge
If he retired from politics -- it was in the middle of the depression -- he did not know if he could get a job elsewhere. The only thing that lay open was return to the farm, and for Bess that was unacceptable. He could hardly exist on the charity of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Wallace, for by this time she had spent her father’s inheritance -- all she owned was the house, a big barn of a place that was run-down and could not have been sold in the depression.
161: HST alone as a senator
A cleaning woman came in to keep the apartment in order, but sometimes the senator did the cleaning. Before each trip to Missouri he ran the vacuum sweeper and dusted, so that he could tell Bess and Margaret and Mrs. Wallace, who lived with them beginning 1943, that things were in order.
180: MGW and family finances
Once Bess passed along forty dollars paid by Mrs. Wallace toward grocery expenses. He gravely responded that he wished her mother would just sit back and let him assume her financial worries; then he added, “Don’t tell her, but I’ll invest her payment...in a game of chance.”
384: Remark suggesting MGW did not have a will
Another attraction of coming home was that he and his wife at last could own the house. In the spring of 1953 they bought out the three Wallace sons; Mrs. Wallace had died intestate, and the family agreed to fix the house’s worth at $25,000.
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Man of the People Alonzo Hamby 1995
• In my opinion, the best psychological examination of HST available. Unfortunately, although understandably, Hamby did not take time to analyze MGW as well. Other than a couple of insightful remarks, most references to MGW contained herein simply relate the events, without remarking on their causes. This book was written two years after the Plain Speaking tapes were released, but Hamby cites Plain Speaking as a legitimate source.
12: Social differences between HST and the Wallaces
That little girl, Bess Wallace, was from one of Independence’s best families. Her grandfather George P. Gates had moved to Missouri from Vermont after the Civil War, had co-founded a successful milling company, and had built a big gingerbread house at 219 North Delaware Street (just across from a more modest structure that would be occupied by Harry’s cousins, the Nolands). Her father, David W. Wallace, was reputedly the handsomest man in town. Her mother, Madge Gates Wallace, had been a beauty whose likeness adorned the milling company’s Queen of the Pantry flour sacks. However egalitarian their ideals, the people of Independence understood social distinctions -- and felt them all the more keenly because they were at variance with the prevailing democratic myth. Young Harry had to be aware that the Wallaces belonged to a class apart. The Wallaces were established and moneyed; the Trumans were a new family of uncertain and insecure fortune. The Wallaces were Presbyterian and Episcopalian; the Trumans were Baptists.
23: David Wallace’s suicide
Bess’s own life had been blighted by an unmentionable personal tragedy. Shortly after Harry had started to work at Commerce Bank in mid-1903, her father, suffering (according to some memories) from throat cancer and deeply in debt, sat down in the bathtub shortly before dawn one morning, put a pistol to his head, and killed himself. Madge Wallace took the children to Colorado for a year, and then returned to Independence and moved into her father’s big house on North Delaware Street. Bess attended day classes at a finishing school in Kansas City for the next two years, graduating in 1906 and staying with her mother, who suffered from chronic health problems. A succession of beaux courted Bess, but Harry was not prominent among them, quite probably not among them at all.
34: Bess’s role at 219 North Delaware Street
After completing her postsecondary education, she had become in many ways the mistress of her grandfather’s mansion on 219 North Delaware, running the house and seeing to the care of her extended family: Grandmother and Grandfather Gates; her partially invalid mother; and her three younger brothers, Frank, George, and Fred.
37: MGW’s reaction to her daughter’s courtship
Weekend after weekend, month after month, year after year, he showed up at 219 North Delaware. Bit by bit, he won her affection. He also established congenial relations with her brothers. Her mother was more difficult. She may have thought Harry a nice young man, but near-unanimous testimony has it that she never really considered him worthy of her daughter. He doubtless was right in understanding that his lack of financial independence was a big part of the problem -- and a legitimate consideration for any mother of prospective bride. But there was more.
Madge Wallace was probably more emotionally than physically dependent on her daughter. Bess was the one consolation in her life. She had thought all Bess’s suitors unworthy and had done what she could to discourage them. In the end, ironically, her possessiveness was to Harry’s benefit. Where other possible husbands probably had slipped away because they found it impossible to accept Mother Wallace as a formidable presence in their lives, Harry did not shrink from the idea. His willingness to share Bess with her mother would make their marriage feasible.
63: Harry’s early morning phone call to Bess
Early on the morning of March 20, the Special Overseas Detail boarded a train for the first leg of its journey to France. By 5:00 a.m., it was in the switchyards in Kansas City. Truman scrambled off, found the yardmaster, and asked for a phone. The office had only a Bell connection; thus it was possible to call Bess but not Mamma and Mary Jane. The official told Truman, “If she doesn’t break the engagement she really loves you.” Madge Wallace answered and summoned Bess, and the couple talked for a few minutes before the train pulled out.
84-85: Early married life at 219 North Delaware Street
From the time her daughter left the altar, Madge Wallace displayed psychological withdrawal symptoms. Writing to Bess at the Blackstone on July 5, her youngest brother, Fred, reported, “Mom says if she doesn’t hear from you,
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she’s going to telegraph the hotel.” After three weeks, they returned home and established their residence at 219 North Delaware with Bess’s mother.
The young couple had talked of living in Grandview, but family responsibilities aside, such could hardly have been an attractive prospect to Bess; nor did it comport well with Harry’s business requirement of easy access to downtown Kansas City. Mrs. Wallace periodically suffered from sciatica, which had a way of becoming especially difficult at time when one of her children was on the verge of establishing independence. Bess’s elderly Grandmother Gates still lived at the big house and also required caring attention. (Grandfather Gates had died a year earlier.)
Bess herself apparently was torn between the resumption of her long-standing family duties and a desire to live separately with her new husband. Harry never attempted to force the issue. As Bess’s sister-in-law May Wallace put it some sixty years later, “Bess thought they should stay until her mother got used to the idea.... [M]other never got quite settled enough for Bess to leave. And Harry liked it that way.” Thus they settled into a life of middle-class respectability, Bess periodically entertaining her bridge club and holding teas for church groups, Harry devoting himself to business and civic activities.
Truman worked hard at nurturing what seems to have been a sincere and mostly unreciprocated devotion to his mother-in-law. Whatever discomfort he may have felt over his residence was more than mitigated by his understanding that Bess was probably happier with it than any other possibility. The convenience and lack of expense doubtless helped also. He seems generally to have given people a Kansas City business address for correspondence; on those rare occasions when Bess was away, he retreated to Grandview or to a Kansas City hotel.
He had, in effect, taken up life in a Wallace family compound. At Madge’s instigation, Grandfather Gates had subdivided lots from the back of his spacious property, had built bungalows fronting on Van Horn Street (now Truman Road), and had presented them to Bess’s married brothers. The oldest, Frank, worked for the family business, Waggoner-Gates Milling. George, the second son, was an order clerk in a lumber mill. Every evening, Frank spent at least a half-hour with his mother; George, by contrast, saw little of her. The youngest brother, Fred, a college student at the time of Bess’s marriage, lived in the big house after his graduation, pursued a quasi-active career as an architect, and allowed his mother to smother most of his normal drives toward maturity and independence.
Inside 219 North Delaware, Grandmother Gates lived in a downstairs bedroom until her death in 1924. Bess’s mother occupied the master bedroom; the Trumans and Fred had rooms down the hall. Shortly after Grandma Gates died, Madge moved to the ground floor in order to avoid painful daily walks up and down the stairs. The Trumans relocated to the master suite.
Business, politics, and fraternal obligations kept Truman away from home on many evenings over the next fifteen years. When the entire family was present for dinner, they ate formally and a bit stiffly, Harry at one end of the table, Madge at the other. The women wore good dresses; the men, jackets and ties. Mother Wallace customarily finished the day doing needlework in her rocking chair, chatting softly with Fred, and listening to music on the radio. Harry might play the upright piano in the music room or retreat to a small nook he used as a study and reading area.
134: MGW’s money
Madge Wallace seems by the 1930s to have run through her inheritance and become semi-dependent on her son-in-law.
153: HST attempts to keep peace in the family
At about the same time, the new county hospital opened. It also provided jobs for the party faithful, foremost among them Fred Wallace, who served as chief architect, thanks to a lot of pressure from Bess, Madge Wallace, and possibly Fred himself.
199: The Trumans leave MGW behind in Independence
Over the Christmas season, Truman passed along the presiding judgeship to Buck Purcell. The family packed for Washington, much to the dismay of Madge Wallace, who remained emotionally dependent on Bess.
261-262: MGW finds it more difficult to manage by herself
As Margaret made her way into young adulthood, Grandmother Wallace found it more and more difficult to manage by herself. The family moved her to a small apartment in Independence, and then to Denver to live with her son Fred and his wife. In September 1944, she came to Washington to stay with Bess and Harry, sharing the second bedroom of the apartment with Margaret.
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Bess found the war years busy and difficult. She probably took satisfaction in her volunteer work at the Washington USO, but much of her life was frustrating. She and Harry were separated more than ever. She worried about her mother’s declining health. She and Margaret took Madge Wallace to Denver in mid-1943. Truman encountered one delay after another in joining them for a planned family vacation. When he finally arrived, he had time only to put his ladies on a train back to Missouri before beginning a speaking tour. “Bess let him have it with both barrels,” Margaret remembers. From Des Moines a day or two later, Harry wrote, “I had the dumps for most of the evening remembering what you said about my being a Senator (wish I’d stayed a clodhopper.)”
533: The night the Korean War began
Bess, Madge Wallace, and Margaret were in Independence for an extended summer stay. Once again, Truman and his wife would be separated on their wedding anniversary, which was the coming Wednesday; but at least they could be together for an early observance. The plane touched down at 2:00 PM, Central Standard Time; in an hour or so, the president was back home at 219 North Delaware, looking forward to a relaxed weekend. His nephew Fred stopped by with his family for a visit. At 6:30, the Trumans and Mrs. Wallace sat down to dinner. Afterward, they all went out on the recently enlarged and screened-in back porch; they chatted, as Margaret recalled, “about everything and nothing in particular.”
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APPENDIX I

References addressing the reliability of Plain Speaking by Merle Miller

• Strictly Personal and Confidential: The Letters Harry Truman Never Mailed Monte M. Poen, 1982

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[Poen’s remarks] In the early sixties, independent TV producer David Susskind wagered that the real Harry Truman would appeal to television audiences. He spent $200,000 to film two one-hour pilots of a projected documentary series featuring the former President himself commenting on major events during his presidency. When the TV networks showed no interest in the series, Susskind bowed out.
Novelist Merle Miller, who had worked as the series scriptwriter, committed to paper what he knew about the real Harry Truman after talking with and observing him during the filming of the two pilots. Miller sent HST a thirty-six page typed manuscript titled “Truman,” which, with some modification, became part of his bestselling book, Plain Speaking, published the year after Truman died. In a letter to HST accompanying his essay, Miller informed the former President, “The piece has now been sold to The Saturday Evening Post,” adding that he hoped he liked it.
Truman didn’t like it. Neither did California retired public-relations executive David Noyes, who handled HST’s literary dealings. On Truman’s behalf, Noyes got agreement from the Post not to publish Merle Miller’s recollections. As for Miller, he never knew that the real Harry Truman had written him an unmailed letter.
April 25, 1963
Dear Mr. Miller:
I thank you for sending me the article which you proposed for the Saturday Evening Post.
I am not in favor of such articles, especially this one which has so many misstatements of fact in it. I am sorry that is the case and if you publish it I shall make that statement public.
Sincerely yours,

• “Plain Faking?” Robert H. Ferrell & Francis H. Heller in American Heritage, May/June 1995

IN THE CLASSIC “ORAL BIOGRAPHY” OF HARRY TRUMAN, MANY OF THE PRESIDENT’S MOST TRENCHANT WORDS MAY SIMPLY HAVE BEEN INVENTED.
he story as Harry S. Truman told it was pretty good, even for that eminent storyteller. He was having a taping session with two friends, William Hillman and David Noyes, and his yet very active mind -- he was seventy-seven in 1961 -- went back to 1944, when he was running for the Vice Presidency. In that antediluvian year he remembered being at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, and “who should be in the suite but old man Kennedy,” Joseph P. Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy. Truman was with Bob Hannegan, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Bob was hitting up old Joe for some money for the campaign in which Roosevelt was running for a fourth term. Joe was not being cooperative. “And he commenced throwing rocks as Roosevelt, saying that he had caused the murder of his own son by bringing on a war.” Joe meant Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., blown up with his bomber on a dangerous mission. “I stood it as long as I could,” said Harry Truman, “and I said, ‘If you say another word about Roosevelt, I’m going to throw you out that window.”
Then the former President told Hillman and Noyes, “But be very careful about use of that because his son is President of the U.S. and he should be the grand boy.”
It’s a good story and can stand by itself. But a third auditor at the taping, and distinctly a minor figure in the recording of Harry Truman’s thoughts, a writer for a proposed television series that was never aired, Merle Miller, later went off with the tapes and arranged a quite different story. In 1974, after Truman’s death, and with knowledge that it is not possible to libel the dead, Miller published his own version in a best seller entitled Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman. Truman, according to Miller, was in Boston in the Ritz-Carlton, and “who should be in his [Hannegan’s] suite but old man Kennedy, the father of the boy that’s in the White House now? Old man Kennedy started throwing rocks at Roosevelt, saying he’d caused the war and so on. And then he said, ‘Harry, what the hell are you doing campaigning for that crippled son of a bitch that killed my son Joe?’ I’d stood it just as long as I could....”
So it went, in the writing of Plain Speaking. Would-be readers of Truman’s words received Miller’s words.
The result for Miller was a sales of half a million copies in hardcover, well over a million in paperback, a book widely regarded as a classic and that is still in print. The result for Truman was that the former President has ever afterward appeared as a bull in the American political china shop. For years thereafter, whenever he was talked about, the American public, and many scholars, too, quoted him out of Miller’s book.
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Miller made notable additions, beyond simple rewritings. For one thing, he was addicted to profanity. There was a marked insertion of what reviewers described delightedly as Trumanisms but which in truth were Miller’s profanities. That the President could use “cusswords” was beyond question. But Truman in the great bulk of his speaking and writing was not a profane man. A believing Baptist, he never would have taken the Lord’s name in vain. If he used an expletive, it would have to do for a considerable time; he was fully aware of the shock effect. The crudeness with which Miller introduced especially one three-letter word should have made the book unbelievable. In this regard one recalls the surprise and dismay with which Truman’s longtime private secretary, Rose A. Conway, once attended a performance of Samuel Gallu’s Give ‘em Hell, Harry. Miss Conway afterward asked the Kansas City television reporter Randall Jessee, himself a close friend of Truman’s, “Did you ever hear the President say such things, Randall? Did he ever talk like that?” Jessee agreed that he did not.
But to continue with Plain Speaking, another evidence of false speaking was the plethora of references to the President’s drinking. The President, Miller wrote, would step out of taping sessions for what the author cutely suggested were “small libations.” Mr. Truman, according to Miller, said his wife did not like this sort of thing, but of course a President is hardly under control of his wife and, Truman related, he continued to take nips. When he and Miller went for lunch to the nearby Howard Johnson’s restaurant, at the bottom of the small hill on which stands the Truman Library (some of the taping sessions were held in the library in Independence, others in New York), “we would always have two or three before setting out, and they were never slight, although they were libational.” But all these references were unlikely, and they should have been warning signs. It was well known that President Truman could nurse a single drink for an entire evening, that all his talk about bourbon and branch water was a part of senatorial, even presidential, bonhomie. Truman was hardly a drinker of any sort. As for the Howard Johnson’s story, it is difficult to take seriously. When the President first went back to Independence after his retirement in 1953 and was driving into Kansas City each day to the Federal Reserve Bank Building, where he had a suite of offices, waiting for the library to be built, he tried once or twice to have lunch in an ordinary restaurant, but matters immediately became impossible as autograph seekers swarmed around him.
Much more serious distortions came from including in the book material that was not on the tapes in any form. The tapes recently became available in the Truman Library, and it is possible to check.
hat is not on the tapes looms large in the book. A chapter on Israel has no basis in them; the same holds for the next chapter, on Herbert Hoover; and for the chapter after that about a flying trip to Mexico in 1947.
Beyond question that book’s worst misrepresentations pertained to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, about whom the tapes say almost nothing. The book is full of hostile Truman commentaries on Eisenhower.
For many readers the most notable passage in Plain Speaking was the recital of an aspect of the much-talked-about friendship between Eisenhower and Kay Summersby, his World War II driver-secretary, the pretty Irishwoman who after the war published two reminiscences, Eisenhower Was My Boss, a straightforward account of wartime duties, and Past Forgetting, a salacious book, with graphic detail of an affair. According to Truman in Plain Speaking, Eisenhower informed Gen. George C. Marshall that he intended to divorce Mamie Eisenhower and marry Kay Summersby. Marshall, Truman allegedly told Miller, wrote back to Eisenhower that he should not do it and promised that if he did, he, Marshall, would drive him out of the Army and presumably make any postwar political career impossible.
Other than what Miller averred was on the tapes, there was almost no corroborating evidence for the tale. The only person who supported it was Truman’s former military aide Maj. Gen. Harry H. Vaughan, who may have been Miller’s source. “General Eisenhower asked General Marshall if he thought a divorce would hurt his military career,” he said in an Associated Press interview after Miller’s book came out. “Marshall told him it certainly would, and would be a very stupid thing to do.” According to Vaughan the letters wound up in Pentagon files. When some years later Ike was running for President, rumor of the letters leaked out, Vaughan said, and supporters of Eisenhower’s opponent for the Republican nomination, Sen. Robert A. Taft, wanted to get hold of the letters and publish them; Truman, who was then President, interceded and returned the letters to Marshall. Vaughan said he could personally confirm the existence of the letters because “I saw them.” When a reporter inquired about the letters at the Marshall Library, in Lexington, Virginia, an assistant archivist said there was no letter from Eisenhower to Marshall discussing the divorce of his wife. The Eisenhower-Marshall correspondence, the archivist said, was only one archival box among the three hundred in the library. General Marshall’s biographer Forest Pogo told one of the present writers years ago that there was nothing on this subject in the Marshall Library.
In the Miller tapes in the Truman Library there is no Truman conversation, nothing, about Kay Summersby.
The tapes do not support the book’s text -- not by any means. Miller’s claim that he and Truman went to lunch at Howard Johnson’s and that he picked up information that way is unbelievable. He also claimed that during videotaping sessions there was a great deal of time wasted while “waiting for somebody to change the film in a camera or do something or other to one of the tape machines.” But it would not have sufficed to allow Miller to hear the President say the many, many things that are not on the tapes.
nyone who has read Plain Speaking may wonder if Truman in his voluminous unpublished papers now in the Truman Library, which include all his correspondence after the Presidency, ever expressed himself about his (as Miller claimed himself to be) “oral biographer.” Actually he did. After the television program failed, Miller disappeared from the scene, writing an occasional letter to the President in 1961-62, one of them from Spain. On two of these letters Truman wrote, “File.” Then, suddenly, in 1963 Miller sent Truman the draft of an article, enclosing a letter relating that he had sold the story to The Saturday Evening Post and “I do hope that you will like it.” Someone, probably Truman, for it sounds like him, composed a letter in response: “I thank you for sending me the article which you proposed for The Saturday Evening Post. I am not in favor
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of such articles, especially this one which has so many misstatements of fact in it. I am sorry that that is the case and if you publish it I shall make that statement public.”
But the proposed reply quickly turned into something else, for the former President engaged a law firm and threatened to sue, forcing Miller to withdraw the article.
After Truman died, Miller published his book.

• “Biography of Truman blunt, but were the words really his?” Steve Kraske in the Kansas City Star, Monday, March 20, 1995.

HISTORIANS SAY AUTHOR OF ‘73 BOOK GROSSLY MISQUOTED 33RD PRESIDENT.
Plain Speaking, the best-selling 1973 oral biography of Harry Truman was a hit for its blunt talk.
Here’s some more: The book is a sham.
That’s the contention of respected Truman scholar Robert Ferrell, who has outlined his findings in an article for American Heritage, a popular history magazine.
Ferrell and Francis Heller, a retired University of Kansas political science professor who helped Truman write his memoirs, contend that Plain Speaking author Merle Miller grossly misquoted the 33rd president.
They also allege that Miller included highly sensitive statements that do not appear on tape recordings Miller used to write the book.
“It’s a fraud,” said Ferrell, a retired history professor at Indiana University and author of a recent Truman biography.
Miller, a novelist and author of books on Lyndon Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower, died in 1986. Two companies involved in the publishing and distribution of the book -- Putnam Publishing Co. And Berkley Publishing Corp., both of New York -- had no comment.
Although questions have been raised before about Miller’s accuracy, the book is a staple of Kansas City-area home libraries. It won rave reviews when published and was a sensation for its salty talk and brutally blunt opinions. Plain Speaking had sales of 500,000 hardcover copies and 1 million in paperback, and is still in print.
When it hit bookstores in 1973, President Richard M. Nixon was struggling to overcome Watergate. Truman’s straightforward language was a welcome contrast and went a long way toward boosting Truman’s post-presidential image.
The book sparked headlines because Truman described Nixon as “shifty-eyed” and a “liar.” He said President Dwight Eisenhower had been a “coward” for dodging Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s assault on Communist infiltration in the government. And Truman lambasted Gen. Douglas MacArthur, whom he had dismissed from command for insubordination during the Korean War.
“There were times when he...well, I’m afraid he was not right in the head,” Truman was quoted as saying of MacArthur.
Upon its publication, the Book-of-the-Month Club offered Plain Speaking and described it this way: “Never has a president of the United States...been so totally revealed, so completely documented.”
One of the most explosive sections concerned Eisenhower and his relationship with Kay Summersby, the general’s World War II driver and receptionist. In the book, Truman said Eisenhower told Gen. George C. Marshall that he intended to divorce Mamie Eisenhower and marry Summersby.
Marshall, the book quoted Truman as saying, advised Ike against the move and vowed that if he divorced Mamie, Marshall would drive Eisenhower out of the Army.
“In the Miller tapes...there is no Truman conversation, nothing, about Kay Summersby,” Heller and Ferrell wrote in their article, scheduled to appear in the May-June issue of American Heritage.
In fact, the two researchers could find nothing on the tapes to substantiate entire chapters of Plain Speaking. And where the tapes do cover identifiable portions of the book, Truman is blatantly misquoted.
“The tapes do not support the book’s text -- by no means,” the authors wrote.
In many cases, the misquotes amount to a rewording of Truman’s language, including frequent insertions of profanity to liven up quotes.
“But anyone interested in the president’s words would not have wished to receive Miller’s words, which in almost every instance was the case,” Ferrell and Heller said.
In one instance, after President Franklin Roosevelt had named Truman as his vice presidential running mate in 1944, the book recounted a meeting in Boston between Truman and Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the future president.
On the tape recording, Truman said, “And he (Kennedy) commenced throwing rocks at Roosevelt, saying that he had caused the murder of his own son by bringing on a war.”
But in the book, the story came out differently:
“Old man Kennedy started throwing rocks at Roosevelt, saying he’d caused the war and so on. And then he said, ‘Harry, what the hell are you doing campaigning for that crippled son-of-a-(expletive deleted) that killed my son Joe?’”
Miller also was notoriously sloppy with facts, Ferrell said.
According to Ferrell, the name of Truman’s Latin teacher was misspelled, as were several others, and the Trumans’ dining room was described as capable of seating 30 when 10 would have been tight. Financial figures were misreported, as were military titles and various historical facts.
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Tales of the tapes
The tapes, which Miller donated in 1981 to Lyndon Johnson’s presidential library in Austin, originally were recorded in 1961 and 1962 when Truman was in his late 70s. They were made for a television documentary on Truman that was never broadcast.
Under Miller’s stipulation, all access to the tapes was blocked for 10 years. After the Johnson library staff reviewed them, the tapes were made public in 1993. Copies of the original tapes were then sent to the Truman Library in Independence, and Ferrell was one of the first to listen to them.
In the preface to Plain Speaking, Miller wrote that the book’s contents were based not only on the taped conversations but also written notes that he compiled during his days of interviews with the former president.
Those notes also are at the Truman Library, although they remain closed to the public. Archivists at the LBJ and Truman libraries have not reviewed them.
Ferrell and Heller do not believe the notes are comprehensive and contain the quotes that do not appear in the tapes.
“I doubt really if he had any notes that would make much sense to us now,” Ferrell said.
He acknowledged the notes could give Miller an out, but added that given Miller’s sloppy work with the tapes, trusting him with written notes would be a mistake.
Other Truman scholars said the findings about Plain Speaking are not surprising.
“I long ago came to the conclusion that is was a fraud,” said Monte Poen, a University of Northern Arizona professor.
He recalled that 10 years before Miller completed Plain Speaking, Miller wrote an article about Truman for The Saturday Evening Post based on the tapes. Miller sent a copy of his article to Truman with a note saying he hoped the president like the story.
Truman did not. He responded with a terse threat in a 1963 letter to Miller.
“I am not in favor of such articles, especially this one which has so many misstatements of fact in it,” Truman wrote. “I am sorry that this is the case and if you publish it I shall make that statement public.”
Although the letter was never mailed, the former president did hire a law firm, which threatened to sue. Miller was forced to withdraw the article.
Poen compared the article to what appeared in Plain Speaking -- published a year after Truman died -- and drew this conclusion:
“I could see then that Miller had taken great literary license and had expanded certain parts of it and changed other parts,” he said in an interview.
‘Not altogether reliable’
Archivists at the Truman Library have long been hesitant to quote Plain Speaking because of the book’s reputation.
David McCullough, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Truman, was given early access to the tapes and quoted Plain Speaking. In his book’s acknowledgments, he described the book as ‘not altogether reliable as to fact” but added that the book “has the vitality of its subject and contains much of value.”
Other examples of mistakes abound. Robert Sherrod, a military historian who is a former reporter for Time and The Saturday Evening Post who covered Truman, pointed out in The New York Times shortly after the book was released that a section in the book about Truman’s first meeting with MacArthur was full of errors. He attributed the inaccuracies to the “fallibility of old men’s memories.”
In a 1974 article for the Columbia Journalism Review, Sherrod questioned the ethics of publishing “an old man’s ramblings, some of which are demonstrably false.” Sherrod noted that in Plain Speaking’s preface, Miller said Truman never expected to have his comments published.
“In this Truman ‘oral biography,’ the defenseless former president is the real victim,” Sherrod concluded.
Ken Hechler, the secretary of state of West Virginia, once worked for President Truman as a special assistant and said he, too, was immediately suspicious of the book.
“Certain portions of the book sound very much like Harry Truman,” he said. “Certain other portions do not sound like him. It’s sometimes a little bit difficult to separate the accurate from the inaccurate.”
Ted Gittinger, the head of special projects at the LBJ Library, worked with Miller on his Johnson book. He also doubts that Miller’s notes would contain sufficient quotations to fill the void on the tapes.
He said Miller never wrote down full quotes, but only key phrases that helped him in later recollections. Although Gittinger said he liked Miller, Gittinger described the author as capable of poetic license.
Miller, he said, would not let “a fact get in the way of a good story.”
What Truman said: two versions
Here’s one example of what scholars call distortions in Merle Miller’s Plain Speaking. The exchange describes a meeting with President Roosevelt in August 1944 shortly after Truman was chosen to be his running mate. Truman describes a conversation in which the president hints that his health is failing.
The tapes: “One remark that he made to me that nailed it down. I was having lunch with him under the big magnolia trees in the White House yard and he said I want you to do some campaigning. I said, all right, I’ll have arrangements
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made for plane reservations anywhere you want me to go. He said, ‘Don’t fly, we can’t both take chances.’ Well, what more would you want? Ha.”
The book: “That day Roosevelt and I had lunch under old Jackson’s magnolia tree, he looked very sick and tired. I knew he was a sick man. And what he said about both of us not being able to take chances, why, what more did you need?”
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Appendix 2

Core Collection of References
I stated in the introduction to this collection that I was not going to offer any opinions of my own. Here at the end of it, however, I find myself unable to at least highlight what I consider to be the most significant references for you to consider when trying to understand Madge Gates Wallace. Therefore, it is my opinion that the starred notations on the following pages best represent the personality and manners of Madge Wallace. Keep in mind, however, that this is my opinion only and therefore you may not want to give any more credence to my list than you would any of the other references included in this book. But for what its worth, the list is below. See Appendix 3 for a summary of these remarks.
See starred references on pages:
**19, note 74. Nice, concise description of Madge Gates Wallace that conveys her sense of propriety based on her Victorian upbringing, as well as her childlike dependence on her daughter.
**24-33, all of Letters from Home. Madge Gates Wallace’s letters to her granddaughter depict most vividly her pitiful childlike manners and total dependence upon her family for everything.
**45, note 9. To really understand Madge Gates Wallace, one needs to understand the Victorian lady in general. Read The Doll’s House, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and The Awakening.
**46, note 19. In understanding Madge Gates Wallace, we have to take her husband’s suicide into account. Madge had been the typical Victorian, so concerned about appearances. Now she imagined herself to be an object of ridicule and scorn. There may have, indeed, been some psychological damage, which would have been continuously exacerbated at the thought of her son-in-law’s involvement in politics -- a situation that forced her to relive the most unbearably embarrassing event of her life.
**48, note 47. Note Margaret’s use of the phrase “disguised with concern.” All of MGW’s control and power over her children was manifested like this. If anyone complained, she could always claim to be unappreciated, thereby increasing the guilt her children felt about their “callousness” towards their mother.
**48, note 51. The key phrase here is “polite, subtle antagonism.” I have no doubt MGW was as nice and polite on the surface as she could be, but was a master of subtle condescending remarks designed to constantly remind Harry he was a little out of his league when pursuing Bess Wallace. She probably thought she could discourage him enough to give up the courtship.
**48, note 55-56. Regardless of how much Madge Wallace may have disliked someone, she would never have been confrontational. She was raised to be a lady and losing her temper or raising her voice would have been vulgar to her. The HBO presentation, Truman, is as wrong as it can be when it depicts MGW trying to bait Harry into a fight.
**49, note 85-86. Madge may have seen her daughter making some of the same mistakes she herself made. Bess found Harry attractive in spite of his lack of resources or prospects, just as Madge had been with David Wallace. Her own husband’s forays into politics did not assuage his financial straits, however, but instead led in part to the tragic catastrophe that prevented Madge from ever living a normal life again. Now, Harry Truman was resorting to politics as well, not by choice necessarily, but simply as a way to insure some type of income. Would Truman’s dabbling in politics lead to the same end? And besides, politics was a dirty business -- what would the neighbors say about Madge when they saw her son-in-law rubbing shoulders with Tom Pendergast?
There is another significant point in this reference: MGW was selfish, but not in a malicious way. She had been raised to believe the world revolved around her and assumed it always would. She was never taught to consider other’s feeling, and in many ways, her “concern” for her children was a tactic calculated to put them in her debt, thereby assuring their attentions. I doubt she ever stopped to think about the strain she put on her daughter’s marriage by insisting Bess remain with her in Independence rather than Harry in Washington. She simply took Bess’s presence as her due.
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**49 note 88-89. Madge’s lack of comment on Bess’s miscarriage points out her lack of touch with unpleasant reality. She believed life should be filled only with beauty and ease, a world of fantasy in which she was the central character. Also, I like Margaret’s line about “a lady’s style” -- always polite and always proper.
**53, note 152. As Truman rose to Senator, MGW’s cognitive dissonance about him rose as well. She probably always believed Harry Truman was a nice guy and genuinely liked him. After all, there seems to be no doubt that he afforded her the attention and respect she believed she deserved. At the same time, however, he was from a “lower station,” as well as a threat to her relationship with Bess. The initial problem of Bess’s marriage was solved by Harry moving in rather than Bess moving out. Now, Truman was a Senator -- the type of title she could take pride in when mentioning her son-in-law. A senator, however, must spend a great deal of time in Washington, DC, and the threat of a separation from her daughter again rears it’s ugly head. The more Madge approved of Harry, the more she felt threatened by the very things she liked about him. What a fix...
Her not living in the real world is again evidenced by her failure to read between the lines of Bess’s letter. Madge is unable to comprehend that someone may have something in their life other than her.
**53, note 162. This is it -- the last line of this reference is the remark that cuts to the core of Madge Wallace’s personality. She was not a confrontational, domineering woman at all, but one that controlled her family with a sense of guilt based on a constant fear of neglecting their poor, fragile, sweet mother, who lives for nothing but her children.
**64, note 47-50. Note Odum’s response to Johnson’s question about MGW’s reaction to HST’s presidency. I believe Madge had nothing personal against Harry Truman at all. In fact, I believe she rather liked him. But, more so, she very much disliked the situation he had gotten her into -- the changes to her house; the living away from Independence; the threat of her husband’s suicide being brought out; the constant insecurity of Bess’s leaving; possibly the refutation of her prediction Harry would not amount to anything; resentment for his success as compared to her sons; and his, as President, receiving more attention than her. There may have been some even deeper bitterness about her life not going the way she wanted in general. Whatever happened to the old days when she was the center of the universe and no one thought about anything except her happiness?
**79, note 139-147. This entire discussion is interesting. Among the high points is Christine’s remark that she never heard a dispute between Harry and Madge, despite Margaret’s comments to the contrary. If Harry and Madge disagreed, it must have been in a very quiet manner. It’s seems to be agreed upon by most people that Madge didn’t want anyone to marry Bess, not just Harry -- again, it wasn’t him she disliked, but the threat he posed. And lastly, Christine reinforces my belief that Madge controlled her children with guilt by being endlessly kind and soliciting, thereby (probably unconsciously) putting them in her debt.
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Appendix 3
The President’s Mother-In-Law: “An Impossible Old Woman?”

(Article appearing the HSTR’s Haberdasher February 1998)
arry Truman’s mother-in-law, Margaret (“Madge”) Gates Wallace, has a reputation as a confrontational, dictatorial woman. HBO’s Truman depicts her as trying to bait her son-in-law into arguments; “Politics cheapens a man!” she shrieks. This image is based on Plain Speaking, an “oral biography” of Truman published in 1973. Author Merle Miller describes Mrs. Wallace as “that impossible old woman,” painting a picture of a tyrant. Recent evidence has proven Miller concocted much of Plain Speaking, yet, for over twenty years, writers took the book for granted and continued to quote it. Thus, the myth of Truman’s mother-in-law as a terrible matriarch has grown over time. Nevertheless, looking beyond Plain Speaking and HBO results in a clearer picture of Madge Gates Wallace.
Raised in the ultra-conservative Victorian era, Madge grew up with wealth and prestige as the daughter of one of Independence’s leading citizens. Proper Victorian women did not concern themselves with anything as vulgar as making a living, but rather concentrated on the “feminine pursuits” such as music, poetry, and homemaking. Parents protected young girls from unpleasantness of any kind, and Madge was no exception. Extremely spoiled, her world was a beautiful realm where she was the center of attention and enjoyed the respect and envy of the entire town. Nothing coarse or disagreeable ever protruded into her fairy tale-like life. She took this for granted.
At age 21, against her father’s wishes, Madge married David Wallace, a handsome and popular young man. David showed a certain amount of promise but had yet to make his mark. As a Democrat, he attempted a career as a political appointee during the Republican McKinley-Roosevelt administrations. None of his positions allowed him to earn the money his young wife was accustomed to spending. Still, around 1890, David bought a large house at 608 North Delaware. (The house currently on the Wallace property is addressed 610.) The Wallaces had four children, the oldest of whom was Bess, the future First Lady. The Wallace family appeared prosperous and happy. Things, however, were not what they seemed.
In June 1903, David Wallace committed suicide by gunshot. The townspeople discovered the family was deeply in debt. Compounding the depression David apparently felt was trouble with alcohol. He was 43 years old.
Madge found herself a widow with a daughter and three young sons. She had never held a job, and her husband left her virtually nothing except an unendurable shame. A proper Victorian, Madge was extremely concerned with appearances. She had spent her life looking down with disdain at others’ scandals. Now she imagined herself the brunt of whispered gossip wherever she went. She fled with her children to Colorado for an entire year, later returning to live in Independence with her parents at 219 North Delaware.
A suicide is difficult under any circumstances, but for Madge Wallace it resulted in irreversible emotional damage. She dreaded leaving the house and changed from her carefree former self into a virtual recluse. Therefore, to fulfill her craving for attention, she turned to her children. Especially dependent on her daughter Bess, Madge remained an emotional child Experiencing some legitimate health concerns and always referred to as “delicate,” she expected Bess to remain unmarried and at home with her. She was never openly demanding; Mrs. Wallace was always the epitome of a mannered Victorian lady. Yet, frantic at the thought of being alone, she kept her children close. She encouraged two of her boys to build their homes in her back yard, while the youngest remained in his mother’s house even after his marriage. And of course, Harry Truman eventually moved in as well. It became obvious Madge would never be able to care for herself. Meanwhile, she smothered her children with kindly concern. Neither of her backyard daughter-in-laws could pass the house without Madge anxiously questioning them about where they were going, what they were doing, when they should be expected home. Although her constant worry often irritated her family, none could complain without appearing callused and unappreciative of their poor mother, who lived only for her loved ones. Madge Gates Wallace did indeed control her children; she controlled them with guilt.
Then, in 1910, along came Harry Truman. At this time, Harry was farming his grandmother’s land in Grandview. The Trumans were deeply in debt and relief appeared nonexistent. In spite of his lack of prospects, however, Bess found Harry very attractive. He had grown in confidence since their school years and was a wonderful companion. Furthermore, he was obviously head over heels in love with her. All this made Madge Wallace very uncomfortable. If Bess had to marry, Madge preferred it to be someone from her own class, and Bess’s indifference to Harry’s bleak future may have reminded Madge of her own disregard for her father’s warnings when she had married David Wallace.
H
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On the other hand, Madge probably found Harry to be a very pleasant young man. He certainly afforded her all the respect and attention she believed she deserved. Under any circumstances, she was polite. So Madge subtly condescended to Harry, reminding him that by courting Bess, he was a little out of his league. Harry wrote plaintively to Bess, “Do you think your mother will care for me enough to have me in her family?” Madge simply did not want Bess to marry. Possibly she believed she could discourage Harry into giving up. Little did she know Harry Truman ....
After the wedding, Truman became involved in local politics, and this may again have reminded Madge of the tragedy of her late husband. She also doubtless felt some concern over what the neighbors would say about Harry’s connection with machine boss Tom Pendergast. But Madge may have grown to respect Harry more as his political star rose. It is hard to imagine a woman as socially conscious as Madge Wallace not taking some satisfaction in mentioning “my son-in-law, the Senator.” However, as Harry’s continuing rise in politics required more time in Washington (especially after his ascension to the presidency), Madge felt the threat of a separation from Bess becoming more likely. That, plus the possible uncovering of the “First Lady’s father’s suicide,” put increasing pressure on Madge Wallace. As a result, she and her son-in-law never became close. They were unable to move beyond a distant, formal relationship. He was often “Mr. Truman” to her; she was always “Mrs. Wallace” to him.
Yet throughout the 33 years Mrs. Wallace lived with the Trumans, her fears remained unfounded. Her husband’s suicide was never made public nor was she ever permanently separated from Bess. Harry was willing to share his wife with her mother. This meant long months apart for Harry and Bess while he was in Washington. But, although the separations were painful, Bess realized that life was much easier if her mother was happy. Harry understood that the guilt Bess would have felt “neglecting” her mother would have tainted any time they could have spent together. Mrs. Wallace, as oblivious as ever, probably never realized the strain she put on her daughter’s marriage.
The President’s mother-in-law controlled her children with what her granddaughter Margaret Truman called “a refusal or inability (take your pick) to accept responsibility,” with a “sweet, pathetic passivity.” Mrs. Wallace’s difficulty manifested itself by her dependency. She was not an easy person to live with, perhaps, but not the “terrible old woman” of Plain Speaking or HBO’s Truman.
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Appendix 4
The Book of Lists #2

Just for fun, I’ve included one of the many lists from The Book of Lists #2. This is the kind of popular, undocumented “book of facts” that gives the American people some of their ideas about lots of different topics, especially historical figures. For curiosity's sake, I have included the entire list (because I know someone will want to know who else was on it), but #8 is the one we are interested in. (#’s 6 & 7 are worth a look as well.)
252-255: 10 REALLY DIFFICULT MOTHERS-IN-LAW
1. Sultana Valide Nur Banu (?-1583)
The widow of Selim the Sot, the sultana spent her declining years luring her son, Ottoman emperor Murad III, away from his favorite and powerful Venetian wife, Safieh Baffo. Her bait? A steady stream of voluptuous concubines, delivered on Fridays. Safieh, however, eventually outmaneuvered her mother-in-law. After Murad died in 1595, Safieh used subtle but daring tactics and managed to get her son, Mohammed III, chosen emperor from among Murad’s 103 children.
2. Marie le Vasseur (1674-1767)
When the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau took as his common-law wife the simple servant girl Therese le Vasseur (they met in 1745 and finally married in 1768), he also took on her greedy mother. Marie le Vasseur bled Rousseau for money taken from the small sums he earned by copying music. In a 1764 pamphlet that blackened Rousseau’s reputation, Voltaire wrote that Rousseau was a heartless family man and accused him of causing Therese’s mother’s death. Actually, Marie le Vasseur was well treated and lived to be 93.
3. Agnes Sterne (?-1759)
British writer Laurence Sterne was plagued by a demanding and malevolent mother, who asked for money from his wealthy wife. Elizabeth Lumley Sterne, a difficult and quarrelsome woman herself, was miffed by her mother-in-law’s brazen requests. Sterne repeatedly said no to his mother, even refusing to bail her out of jail when she was arrested for vagrancy.
4. Princess Juliane Marie (1729-1796)
The widowed stepmother of effeminate, half-crazy King Christian VII of Denmark watched as Caroline Matilda, Christian’s queen and the sister of George II of England, carried on an affair with Count Johann Struensee, the king’s physician. When Caroline Matilda and her lover began to promote democratic reforms, Juliane Marie finally stepped in and engineered a palace revolution in which Caroline Matilda was arrested and Struensee was beheaded. Exiled to Hanover, Germany, Caroline Matilda died in 1775 at the age of 24.
5. Tzu Hsi (1835-1908)
Few people dared to threaten the power of Tzu Hsi, concubine of Chinese emperor Hsien Feng. When the emperor died, Tzu Hsi’s son, T’ung Chih, ascended the throne, but he soon succumbed to smallpox. T’ung Chih’s wife, Alute, an intelligent and tenacious woman, was a possible heir to the throne but overdosed on opium, most likely at her mother-in-law’s instigation. Her “convenient” death enabled Tzu Hsi to choose the new emperor.
6. Frances Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (?-1899)
New York socialite Jennie Churchill, wife of Lord Randolph Churchill and mother of Winston Churchill, did not please her mother-in-law, possibly because Jennie was prettier and more accomplished than the old duchess’s daughters. Jennie once summed up their relationship: “We are always studiously polite to each other, but it is rather like a volcano ready to burst out at any moment.”
7. Sara Delano Roosevelt (1854-1941)
For three years Sara Delano Roosevelt fought the marriage of her beloved son Franklin (later president of the U. S.) to Eleanor Roosevelt. Once married, Eleanor was a perfect daughter-in-law to the meddling Sara until Franklin was crippled by polio. At that time the two women battled over his future, since Sara wanted him to retire and Eleanor advocated an active political career. Caroline Phillips, a good friend of Eleanor’s, wrote: “That old lady with utter charm and distinction and kindliness hides a primitive jealousy of her daughter-in-law, which is sometimes startling in its crudity.”
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8. Madge Gates Wallace (1862-1952)
A cantankerous woman, Madge Gates Wallace lived with Harry S Truman and his wife, her daughter Bess, for 33 years, until she died at the age of 90. She never thought much of Harry, even after he became president, and was heard to remark in his presence that other men would have made better presidents -- including that “nice man, Thomas E. Dewey.” A proper son-in-law, Harry kept his mouth shut.
9. Queen Mary, consort of King George V of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1867-1953)
When King Edward VIII abdicated from the throne to marry “the woman I love,” twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson, the royal family refused to recognize his new wife. At the end of W. W. II, Wallis, then Duchess of Windsor, wrote to her mother-in-law, hoping to bring about a rapprochement. Queen Mary’s only reply was an icy silence.
10. Lillian Carter (1898- ) [since deceased]
After Jimmy Carter’s stint in the navy, his wife Rosalynn did not want to return to their home in Plains, Ga., because, as Jimmy wrote, their “married freedom might be cramped or partially dominated by relatives, particularly by her mother or my mother.” Lillian Carter has complained that Jimmy pays more attention to Rosalynn than to her and once told a reporter, “I love Rosalynn, but she’s kind of...reserved.”
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