Truman Family Farm, National Historic Landmark

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

The Truman Family Farm is located at 12301 Blue Ridge Blvd, Grandview MO. In 1906, at twenty two years old, Truman left his banking job in Kansas City in order to work here on his family's farm. Here he shared a seven bedroom home with his parents, grandmother, brother, and sister. The house had no plumbing or electricity and his room was extremely hot in the Summer and cold in the Winter. In 1914 he wrote, “It was an awful task to arise this morning in that ten-degree room,” Truman lived and worked on the farm for eleven years. He was in charge of feeding the livestock and milking the cows every morning before helping with breakfast. After breakfast he would spend the day working on the farm until the evening when the family gathered together to read, talk, or play the piano and sing.

Images

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

The Truman farm was a 600 acre farm that Truman worked on for 11 years. He did a variety of different jobs while on the farm and was well liked by many of the workers and people around the area. Solomon Young, Harry Truman's maternal grandfather, built a The original farmhouse built on the land by Solomon Young, Harry Truman's maternal grandfather, built an impressive home on the land in 1867; however, the structure burned in 1893, and was replaced with the current structure. Between 1922 and 1940 over 200 acres of the farm was sold off to developers until the farm was foreclosed on in 1940. In 1946 President Truman and his siblings started buying back the farm and by the early 1950s they owned 529 acres of the original 600. However, between 1955 and 1958 they sold most of the land back to developers who built Truman Corner's Shopping Center.

Sources

https://www.nps.gov/hstr/learn/historyculture/truman-farm-home-photo-tour.htm
Jon E. Taylor. Truman's Grandview Farm. Charleston: History Press, 2013.

Additional Information

Here is the link to the Website for Trumans Family Farm