John W. Meador Oral History Interview

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened July, 1981
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[1]

JOHNSON: Mr. Meador, would you give us something of your own background, where and when you were born, and perhaps your parents' names?

MEADOR: I was born in 1895 on Raytown Road and 139th Street.

JOHNSON: Not too far from where we are right now?

MEADOR: Very close; just a mile from where we are now. In 1902 my grandfather sold a 200-acre ranch there and moved up to Belton, Missouri, and bought a 62-acre farm here, where I am now, from Laura Everhart. She was Solomon Young's daughter.

[2]

The old building out there is one of the buildings that they built here.

JOHNSON: You mean that Solomon Young's daughter built here?

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: Right out here behind us. Was this Solomon Young's land then originally?

MEADOR: This was originally Solomon Young's land, entered from the Government.

JOHNSON: Do you recall when he entered it?

MEADOR: Yes, it would have been about 1852 I believe.

JOHNSON: And how many acres?

MEADOR: We bought 62 acres. We had to buy a little more of it, but we traded that extra to Mr. Askew, the harness man in Kansas City.

JOHNSON: What were your parents' names?

[3]

MEADOR: Henry Meador; that's his picture right there.

JOHNSON: It's in the Jackson County Advocate, Thursday, February 12, 1976.

MEADOR: They bought the land here for $40 an acre.

JOHNSON: Now who did?

MEADOR: My father.

JOHNSON: Your father bought it for $40 an acre?

MEADOR: Solomon Young had gotten it for $1.25 an acre. We have held onto it all this time. My grandfather told me that he made most of his money holding onto real estate.

JOHNSON: That your grandfather did?

MEADOR: My grandfather, William I. Meador, of Belton.

JOHNSON: Did he say the same thing about Solomon Young?

MEADOR: Yes. Solomon Young was a great land trader.

[4]

At one time in California he traded a big herd of cattle to the Spanish for $70,000 worth of land.

JOHNSON: That was around Sacramento I believe.

MEADOR: I believe so.

JOHNSON: Your father or grandfather -- do you remember stories that they had about Solomon Young?

MEADOR: Yes. Now, Solomon Young's grandson lived across the road from me here on the north, and he inherited 80 acres there from his mother.

JOHNSON: Now what was his name?

MEADOR: Solomon Chiles. And his mother's name was Sarah Chiles. Now he was much older than the Trumans and was able to give me a little earlier history. He said that his grandfather, Solomon Young, and his grandmother, Louisa Gregg Young, came to Missouri in 1841 and they came on a steamboat. They had two children then, probably

[5]

William Young, and I would have to look at my papers to tell what the other child's name was. But Solomon Young had sold 800 acres of land there in Kentucky. I don't recall the county now.

JOHNSON: Shelby County.

MEADOR: Shelby County I believe it was. He had been raised by an older brother. He was more or less an orphan; his parents were both dead. I believe the oldest brother's name was Michael Young, and he had two sisters, and one of them was Hattie Young, who married a fellow named Powell. I haven't been able to locate them amongst the Powell family, although I have read their history.

JOHNSON: I might just mention there's a new genealogy out on the Youngs and it identifies Hattie and Solomon's father. So, it's just something recent that we were able to turn up.

[6]

MEADOR: That's good. I could have found them maybe by getting the 1850 census records, but it's quite a little chore to get them and a bigger chore to read them. I spent a whole half day reading 6,000 names one time to get the census records of my own family. Paul Meador and I have had very good luck tracing our families through the census records.

Solomon Young came on a steamboat because he had a wife and two babies, and his wife didn't like to go in the wagon train. I think he had slaves to bring the wagons on later, maybe six months or a year later. But he walked out here, walked up the said Dodson Hill, which is quite a hill to climb, and came out here to 135th and Byars Road. They had a gun and an axe and two babies and a blanket. They built a kind of a shelter out of logs and things, and stayed out here until their wagon train came through, at least.

JOHNSON: Now where did you say that place was?

[7]

MEADOR: It is known now as the Napier place, although Henry Byars lived there a good many years. And it's 135th and Byars Road, on the west side of the road. The original house that they had there was burned down, but Mr. Chiles showed me the foundation stones and the old well, and so forth. So I'm satisfied that the Youngs lived there first.

JOHNSON: Was that a log cabin, do you think, or frame...

MEADOR: Well, Mr. Chiles called it a hog pen, covered with brush.

JOHNSON: Sounds like a lean-to, I suppose.

MEADOR: Yes. There has been very little said about his slaves except I think one that was named Hiram Young, who purchased his freedom and was a very good blacksmith there in Independence. After his slaves got here, why, he probably put them to work to build him a log cabin.

[8]

When he took his trips with his wagon train on out to Salt Lake City and California and so forth, why, his wife wouldn't go with him. It was too hard a trip for her and her children, so he left her here alone with the two children. There were a good many Indians around here in those days. There was old Black Bob who had his reservation just across the line here in Kansas. They were kind to the Indians, and the Indians would come up and beg for bread and "piggy meat." But when there weren't any menfolks there, why, Mrs. Young would set the dogs on the Indians. He had a grindstone that you'd turn by hand, and the Indians liked to sharpen their knives on that grindstone. So she was a pretty brave person to stay here that way with the Indians.

JOHNSON: That was Harriet?

MEADOR: Harriet Louisa Gregg Young, I believe her name is. Now, you'll have to excuse any mistakes I make from memory, because it's...

[9]

JOHNSON: Well, my memory's not that great either.

MEADOR: If it doesn't sound correct, why, we'll look it up, because I've got papers and documents here that will correct us on it.

JOHNSON: You mentioned the Indians being one possible threat when Solomon was gone on his trading trips, apparently out West. Also, of course, during the early stages of the Civil War she had these, what she called the "Red Legs," as a threat.

MEADOR: She sure did.

JOHNSON: From red men to Red Legs I guess.

MEADOR: They burned down her house, the Red Legs did.

JOHNSON: They burned her house?

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: I know that they stopped there and required

[10]

her to fix a breakfast and then they cut the hogs up, butchered the hogs.

MEADOR: Cut up 400 head of hogs.

JOHNSON: But they actually burned the house, or at least later the house was burned?

MEADOR: That house was burned so that -- the present house there by Vivian Truman's is not the old house. There was a house a quarter of a mile south of where I live here that was evidently built by Solomon Young. A map shows that at one time that was deeded to Harry's mother, Martha Truman. There is no record, however, that Martha ever lived there.

JOHNSON: You say that's a quarter of a mile south of here?

MEADOR: It was, but they moved it over into the River Oaks district, and it was used there for a number of years. Finally when they began improving

[11]

River Oaks they burned it down. It's an unfortunate thing that about five of Solomon Young's houses have been burned down. The one remaining there at Truman Corners was really put on old Pete Thompson's land, and I don’t know whether Solomon Young's family ever lived in it or not. I think there was another house down on Martha Truman Road that probably was burned.

JOHNSON: The house burned that used to be where the present farm home is. The house burned there in 1893.

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: The house they lived in in 1861 when the Red Legs showed up during the Civil War, where is that house located?

MEADOR: I couldn't tell you for sure where it was.

JOHNSON: You're not sure where they were living right then?

[12]

MEADOR: No; but there were two more houses on 15th Street. Of course, they were farm houses when they were built, since the town of Grandview was not founded until the 1890s. One had been moved from a site across the street from where Mary Truman lived when she died, and the other one was about a quarter of a mile south of it and was owned by Harrison Young, one of the boys.

JOHNSON: And these two houses burned as well?

MEADOR: Yes. Probably Harrison Young's house on the south part of 15th Street was burned by accident. But the way they identified Solomon Young's houses was that he was partial to maple trees, and he'd set out a nice row of maple trees in front of three houses there in Grandview.

JOHNSON: Some of the maples are still there in town?

MEADOR: There might be a few of them. There are more maples around the house out there west of Truman Corners.

[13]

JOHNSON: So you have quite a bit of information don't you on the Solomon Young period. That is, the pre-Civil War right up to his death then in '92.

MEADOR: Yes. Now, one of his granddaughters is Mrs. Dowell Hays, Grace Hays, who lives on High Grove Road, just across the street and south of the Masonic Hall, and she can tell you some things. I have talked to her and her brother about it. Her grandmother was the mother of Solomon Chiles; that's the way they are related. She was known as Sally Chiles until the officer in Independence killed him in a quarrel.

JOHNSON: Yes, I've heard about him.

MEADOR: I have the article in the Kansas City Star with his picture and everything. I have permission from his grandson, and Grace Hays, to make photostatic copies of it. I don't like to tell stories unless the members of the family are willing to have them photostated.

[14]

There was another bad incident that happened in the Young family that they would rather not have published, maybe, I don't know. Of course most of them are dead now and probably Harry's daughter or Vivian's children might not want it published, so I'd rather get permission from them before I give the records on it. The trouble was that there was a quarrel in a saloon down at Hickman Mills and Harrison Young tried to kill his brother Will Young in a quarrel.

JOHNSON: Had a temper maybe?

MEADOR: Oh, yes, even Sol Chiles had a bad temper, but he was a mighty good neighbor and after it was over he'd cry about it.

JOHNSON: Are there any other Youngs that we haven't covered that you are acquainted with, or know the history of?

MEADOR: There was a John Young in Lafayette County that married my grandfather's sister Drucilla

[15]

Meador. They went out to California and I've never been able to connect them up.

JOHNSON: Did Solomon Chiles talk about Solomon Young or give you any anecdotes or stories?

MEADOR: Well, what I've been telling you about the Indians is about all that Sol would tell me.

JOHNSON: She was by herself quite a bit of the time for several years there wasn't she?

MEADOR: Well, before the war they evidently had Negro slaves, because every time they'd have a baby they'd turn that baby over to a Negro woman to nurse and take care of it. Sometimes the Negro woman would even breast feed the babies, because Negro women, slaves, usually produced a baby every year for their income.

They claim that probably after he got established in the wagon train business there at Westport, that they moved down on about 30th and Agnes, I think. Martha Truman, Harry's

[16]

mother, claims that she was born down there.

JOHNSON: Okay now, what's that address again?

MEADOR: It's on Agnes, and I think it was about 30th., somewhere along there.

JOHNSON: 30th and Agnes.

MEADOR: Yes, we'll have to look it up in some of the other registers.

JOHNSON: She claims she was born near that intersection there? That would have been 1852.

MEADOR: I haven't been able to find the birthdays of very many of Solomon Young's children.

JOHNSON: Before we leave the location where she was born, you say that she claimed that? Was that something that you heard through Solomon Chiles?

MEADOR: That's something I read in a newspaper.

JOHNSON: I see. Did you know Martha Young, and did you talk to her about the family?

[17]

MEADOR: Yes, I did. Now there's another incident that probably no one else has recorded. My mother was a very great friend of Martha Truman.

JOHNSON: Your mother's first name was what?

MEADOR: Maggie Meador.

JOHNSON: Was Margaret her given name?

MEADOR: They just called her Maggie, and she was a daughter of Ambrose Clements, one of the early settlers here in this neighborhood. Ambrose Clements lived across the road from Solomon Young's land at a point that is now about a half mile north of High Grove Road and alongside 71 Highway. There was no highway there then.

The story that Grandma Truman told my mother was that she, Martha Truman, ran away from home in 1857.

JOHNSON: She was five years old.

[18]

MEADOR: She would have been five years old then, and we have that date to the day. It was when my uncle, John B. Clements, was born. She said she ran away from home to go see the new baby over at the Clements' house.

JOHNSON: How far away was that?

MEADOR: It couldn't have been maybe more than a half a mile, so that makes me think that she was probably living in the house there on what is now 13th Street, at that time.

JOHNSON: They had moved from 30th and Agnes?

MEADOR: Probably moved back to the house in Grandview.

JOHNSON: As a five year old she ran to see your...

MEADOR: See my uncle, the newborn baby. That kind of fixes the date that they lived here in Grandview at one time.

JOHNSON: Well, they moved around quite a bit.

[19]

MEADOR: Yes, they moved around so much that you've got to have special information to figure out where they were.

JOHNSON: Need a real atlas.

MEADOR: You know the Truman family was so much younger than the others that they didn't know about all that moving around.

I have the abstract to our land here that was given to us when my father bought it, and it tells all the transactions that Solomon Young made pertaining to this tract of land. It skips the other transactions of "property not in question" as it states it. I can't give you the exact dates without looking them up, but it tells when Solomon Young entered his land from the Government and when he traded it to George Harper, who was a close neighbor here, for $5,000. He used that $5,000 to equip a wagon train going West.

JOHNSON: Do you have any idea about when that would have been?

[20]

MEADOR: Yes, I can give you the date by looking it up in the abstract.

Four or five years afterwards, why, he buys the land back from George Harper for $12,000, so he made $7,000 on his trip out there, although he lost a large number of cattle on the drive. It was risky business. They said that it was such a risk that he deeded some of his land to his son Harrison Young, so if he lost, why, they couldn't take his land.

JOHNSON: I've read figures that he may have owned as much as 5,000 acres at one time. Doesn't that sound a little high?

MEADOR: No. I have a map here and it looked like he owned the biggest part of this end of the county.

JOHNSON: At least in Washington Township?

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: Well, he was supposed to have owned about 2,000 acres I think at the end of the Civil War.

[21]

This farm up here in Grandview was 600 acres, but he also had some land in addition to that.

MEADOR: I guess so; we'll have to get the maps out before I can make you an accurate statement on it. It would depend on what time it was because he swapped land back and forth.

JOHNSON: It's kind of hard to follow because there are so many transactions. I tried to look at the deeds once and I lost track.

MEADOR: It takes several hours to run down anything like that.

JOHNSON: Do you recall anything about the house that preceded the present farm house? I hear that it was a very nice home, and it was the one that burned in 1893. Is there anything that was said about that house? Is there any way that we can know what it looked like?

MEADOR: It might be similar to the house that Thompson built. Anyhow, it's that house there by Vivian's

[22]

house at Truman Corners. Now the other houses were not quite as nice.

JOHNSON: You say the Thompson house that's near the present farm?

MEADOR: Near the cemetery, yes. That gives it an exact location. Thompson owned that cemetery at one time; he buried his wife and some of the children, and maybe he's buried there. On the east side of the cemetery is a little iron fence on a lot about ten foot square; he's got his monument in there, although you'd have to get close to read it.

JOHNSON: He's the one that started the cemetery?

MEADOR: He probably did. He deeded the cemetery land for a church, and it was a union church, to be used for church services. The Methodists and the Baptists both used it.

JOHNSON: Is that what became known as Blue Ridge Baptist?

[23]

MEADOR: It was known as Blue Ridge Missionary Baptist. Down at Hickman Mills there was a Palestine Baptist Church. It was called "hardshell Baptist" because they didn't believe so much in missions.

JOHNSON: Of course, Martha called herself a "lightfoot" Baptist. She liked to dance apparently. When did you first meet Martha Young Truman?

MEADOR: Oh, let's see, I didn't pay much more attention to her than anybody else around Grandview until about the time I got up into high school. My mother would give parties out here for the young folks in the church, and Mary Truman came out here to the parties two or three times. Some of Mary Truman's friends who came along with her were Lillie Sweeten, and Eunice Jones and Genevieve Thornton.

JOHNSON: That would have been in what years?

MEADOR: That would have been along about 1910.

JOHNSON: You had met Martha earlier than that, hadn't you?

[24]

MEADOR: Not much earlier. I had seen her around Grandview, and I saw Harry around Grandview. We weren't on speaking terms though because he was older than I was.

Well, it's said that during election years Harry would be out plowing corn, and the depot was a quarter of a mile north of Main Street in Grandview, and Harry would tie his horse to the fence when he was plowing and go over to the depot to get the election news.

JOHNSON: Over the telegraph.

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: What year was it you were born?

MEADOR: In '95, 1895.

JOHNSON: Then you were almost 11 years old when Harry Truman moved back to the Young farm.

MEADOR: I probably was, yes, but I didn't know him much from anybody else. Didn't have any

[25]

idea he'd ever be President. And I didn't even remember about him being in the Post Office there. I don't think he was in there more than a year or so.

JOHNSON: Well, apparently Ella Hall did the work and got the pay. He had the title but she was the one that did the work.

MEADOR: I see.

JOHNSON: Do you recall his father, John Anderson Truman?

MEADOR: Not particular, although I knew that my uncle, Dave Clements, and John Truman had an argument about building a fence around the cemetery.

JOHNSON: Who won the argument?

MEADOR: Well, they finally built a fence around the cemetery and put up two stone posts there.

JOHNSON: Was John Anderson Truman for it or against the fence?

[26]

MEADOR: I think he was against having a cemetery there even.

JOHNSON: It was there before he was though, I think.

MEADOR: Yes. Another thing about John Truman, I don't know whether I should tell it or not, but he was wet. He was very anxious to get a saloon in Grandview. And so they had a good bit of opposition about that. They finally put the saloon down on Botts Road, just outside of the city limits of Grandview. They called the fellow that operated the saloon "Old Blinky Blitz."

JOHNSON: John Anderson Truman wasn't known as a heavy drinker was he?

MEADOR: I don't think so, no.

JOHNSON: He apparently was a rather feisty type; that's what the records seem to indicate.

MEADOR: Well, yes. I don't think he was as much a fighter as the Young boys were. Now Jim Crow

[27]

Chiles and Will Young had served in the Southern Army, and they would shoot and argue afterwards.

JOHNSON: Well, they may have been acquainted with the Youngers then I suppose.

MEADOR: The Youngers had a farm just a quarter of a mile east of here, and one of them had the land that is Grandview's ballpark now,

JOHNSON: Do you know if the Solomon Youngs were acquainted with, or friends of, the Youngers?

MEADOR: I couldn't say; that was so much before my time. You see, I was born in '95 and the war was back there in '61.

JOHNSON: But Cole Younger was still living in '95, I believe. I think he was the last one to die.

MEADOR: Yes, he lived there in Lee's Summit and was a very respectable man.

JOHNSON: Did you ever see him?

[28]

MEADOR: No, I never saw him, but I saw Doc James in Belton, and he was one of Quantrill's men and related to Jesse James. He had one leg, and was a veterinarian. He raised two fine daughters and moved down to Texas.

JOHNSON: Did you grow up on the farm you were born on?

MEADOR: It was later called the Atha Hereford Farm.

JOHNSON: The one you were born on?

MEADOR: The place where I was born.

JOHNSON: And how long did you live there?

MEADOR: I lived there about seven years.

JOHNSON: And then you moved to where?

MEADOR: Here, to this place.

JOHNSON: The place we're on right now. And Solomon Chiles lived across the road.

[29]

MEADOR: Across the road, north of us.

JOHNSON: And that's when you got acquainted with him, after you moved here?

MEADOR: I would plow corn across the road from him. My father would put me out plowing corn and he would go off and do jobs of carpentry work. I was plowing away there one day and Sol was plowing on the other side of the fence. Sol was almost blind. He could see by getting down close to it, and he saw that I wasn't doing a very good job of plowing. So he stopped his team, crawled through the fence, and came over and showed me how to set the shovels so I would hill up the corn better. That's the kind of neighbor he was.

JOHNSON: He must have been a pretty good farmer.

MEADOR: Oh, he was.

JOHNSON: Did he ever do any work for Martha on the Solomon Young farm in Grandview?

[30]

MEADOR: No. They weren't on very friendly terms. After Sol's father was shot there in Independence, that separated, divided the families. Mrs. Jim Crow Chiles, Sarah Young, was left a widow woman there. But Jim Crow had made pretty good money on some things and had a right nice house and pretty good furniture. But after she was left there a widow woman with five children, why, she had no way of making a living and couldn't keep up that house. So she asked my grandfather to come down and move her out here to the Harper place, which belonged to Solomon Young at that time. Solomon Young was on a trip out West. So my grandfather, to accommodate her, took his team and wagon and some more of the neighbors, went down there to Independence, and moved Sarah Young out here to Grandview.

When Solomon Young came back, he didn't want to have to take care of her, and he came over and gave my grandfather an awful cussing for bringing

[31]

then out here.

My grandfather had rented 80 acres of land off of him and had part of it plowed. That provoked him so, that he just let the land go and didn't try to rent it anymore.

JOHNSON: Harry Truman himself had just a few vague memories of his grandfather, because Harry was only about eight years old when his grandfather died.

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: Any other stories about Solomon Young before we move away from that?

MEADOR: That's about all I can think of now.

JOHNSON: If you think of anything we can get back to it.

You have mentioned some things about Martha Young, but do you recall them selling the farm, for instance, in 1919, after Harry Truman got

[32]

back from France, after World War I? Do you remember anything about the selling of the farm up there?

MEADOR: There were so many of those transactions that it would be hard to say which ones I do remember. My abstract shows the division of Solomon Young's property when he died, which was in '92 I believe, and my Grandfather Clements was one of the Administrators that settled up his property. We have a map showing which property was involved in that settlement and each one of the children got about 80 acres apiece.

JOHNSON: You say you have a map that shows that?

MEADOR: Yes, it showed in my abstract.

JOHNSON: Could we borrow it and copy that?

MEADOR: I think so, yes. After they got it divided up, about 80 acres apiece for the children, why some of them were dissatisfied and traded their

[33]

land around with each other, after they got it settled. But there was a whole lot of the land that had been already deeded to Martha Truman before then, and to Harrison Young. Will Young got 80 acres on High Grove Road and Byars Road where the new fire station is. But he wasn't a good real estate investor, and they say he died without any money.

JOHNSON: Solomon's widow Harriet, I believe, died in 1909. Her property then was deeded to Martha and Harrison, I understand. At any rate, they had 600 acres there at Grandview that they were farming, with the help of Martha's son, Harry.

MEADOR: I think they were partial to Harrison. I don't think any of them liked Will Young, except the Waskom family. Solomon's sister Mary had married Peerson Waskom. The Waskoms therefore were decendants of Mary Young. When Will Young was wounded in a gunfight, why, he went to Mary Waskomb's and she nursed him back to health.

[34]

JOHNSON: Which gunfight are you referring to?

MEADOR: Well, maybe I should mention that. That was the gunfight between him and Harrison Young.

JOHNSON: That was in Grandview where it happened?

MEADOR: That was on Food Lane.

JOHNSON: That's something I hadn't heard before.

MEADOR: Well, I've got it in writing, written by my grandmother in a letter to her brother, so it's pretty authentic. But maybe I'd better not publish it.

JOHNSON: Did you hear anything about their reputation as farmers? That is, Harry and Vivian and Martha and Harrison when they lived on that Grandview acreage?

MEADOR: They bragged on Harry being able to plow a straight row. I have another article here written by Ben Ervin in Hickman Mills that tells about

[35]

Harry feeding a threshing machine. L.C. Hall had the threshing machine then; some of the other farmers felt sorry for Harry, and would help him when his wagon came in.

JOHNSON: They'd help Harry?

MEADOR: Yes, because Harry couldn't keep up with the other boys so well, although they always said that Harry was a pretty good ball player. Harry was more of a piano student.

JOHNSON: Yes, he was wearing those thick glasses, I guess, too.

Since you mentioned the threshing machine of Hall's, it's not a very good print here, but you see this is a photograph of that threshing machine. Mr. Strode did know some of the people here. Are you acquainted with the people in that photograph, and do you know anything about any of the farm equipment that the Trumans may have used besides this threshing machine? Do you know anything about the implements that were used?

[36]

MEADOR: No.

About the Trumans now, Harry was born down at Lamar, Missouri, and his father was a horse and mule trader. He made more money selling and buying horses than he did farming with them.

I have a picture of Harry's outfit over there in France. They didn't have good horses and mules over there. They had great big old percheron work horses, those big, heavy, clumsy, stout things. They showed Harry trying to maneuver those big heavy horses.

Well, Harry had had a good bit of experience, I guess, with horses and knew how to handle them. He could make them pull that artillery around and get it up in line. Harry and I were over there at the same time.

JOHNSON: Oh, you were in France at the same time?

MEADOR: At the same time, but in different places.

JOHNSON: What outfit were you with?

[37]

MEADOR: I was with the 313th Engineers. In the meantime, while Harry had been working on a farm, I had gone to school and taken a little engineering and surveying.

JOHNSON: Where did you graduate from high school?

MEADOR: Belton, Missouri.

JOHNSON: And then you went on to college or university?

MEADOR: I went to college over at Liberty, William Jewell.

JOHNSON: You went to William Jewell and learned some engineering?

MEADOR: I took a course in engineering there my sophomore year. My grandfather had given me $600; that paid my first two years in school over there. For the next year I was about broke, and so I took a Civil Service examination and got a job surveying the railroad.

JOHNSON: What year would that have been?

[38]

MEADOR: That was in 1917, and they gave me a job resurveying the Burlington Railroad from Omaha to Denver. The Government was resurveying it to take a valuation of it. They expected to have to take the railroads over during the war. So I walked all the way from Omaha to Denver. We slept in the Burlington Pullman car at nights, but we had to walk back and forth to where it was side-tracked. So I more than walked all the way to Denver and back.

JOHNSON: That was in 1917?

MEADOR: Yes, and on that gravel ballast you could wear out a pair of shoes in a week's time nearly.

JOHNSON: I guess so.

MEADOR: I carried chain most of the time; part of the

[39]

time I used a rod. I thought maybe I would be able to stay out of the Army on account of having a Government job that way, but Woodrow Wilson sent me a special invitation, "Greetings to Whom it May Concern. We want you to take a trip over to France."

JOHNSON: They needed engineers I suppose.

MEADOR: Yes. I didn't mind it so much, going into the Army. I kind of liked to see what it looked like over there in Europe. After I got back safe and sound, why, it was worth as much as a year's work in college to go over there to Europe. It was a great experience.

JOHNSON: Were you ever in the sector in which the Battery D was located in France?

MEADOR: Right towards the last I was moved up there close to Metz and Verdun where they were doing the heaviest fighting.

[40]

JOHNSON: Did you know, or did you ever meet Harry Truman over in France?

MEADOR: No.

JOHNSON: But you knew he was there?

MEADOR: I don't know whether I knew that he was there or not. We didn't know anything over there. They don't tell you anything, and what you don't know the Germans can't get out of you.

JOHNSON: I guess that's true.

MEADOR: Except that I knew the metric system, and a little French. So they'd hand our officers a French map -- and I have one of the French maps here yet. You couldn't tell where you were even if you had a map. So I had to take those maps and check them over. I went up to the front lines at Belfort; that's a town right at the junction of Germany and France and Switzerland.

JOHNSON: The southern sector?

[41]

MEADOR: Yes. That wasn't very active country over there because it was too well fortified. We stayed in barracks and dugouts back two or three miles from the front line. We'd only go up to the front lines in case the Germans attacked us. We kept men on outposts out in no-man's land to call up and notify us whenever the Germans were making that advance. But my job was to go up there -- sometimes I took a bodyguard with me -- and check up on the trenches and the barbed wire entanglements and everything that was shown on the French map so that we'd know what kind of condition things were in up there.

I fired one shot all the time I was over there. I had to carry my gun with me, a big Enfield rifle. An airplane came over one day and I could see they were shooting shells that were bursting all around him. I thought that they had hit him because I saw smoke coming down from the plane. I thought, why, he's going

[42]

to crash right here pretty close to me. About that time the mud began splattering up there right close to me. He was shooting at me! So I jumped back in the dugout and took a shot at him, but it was just like shooting at a crow flying.

JOHNSON: When did you know about Harry Truman's record in the war? Was that after you got back?

MEADOR: After I got back here in the United States.

I had one cousin over there in the "lost battalion," and I didn't even know that he was over there.

JOHNSON: Did you have some friends or some acquaintances that were in Battery D, or that fought under Truman or with Truman?

MEADOR: There was a Lieutenant McCullen, I believe. He had been in the surveying party with me out there in Nebraska. As soon as he found me over

[43]

there in France, he put me to work, because he knew I had experience. He was with the Master Engineers. I was just a private. But towards the last, they saw that the big battle was going to be there around Verdun and Metz. So they moved us down to Arnaville and Pont-a-Mousson which were towns right about fifteen miles south of Metz.

JOHNSON: Was that in the 35th Division sector, do you recall?

MEADOR: Yes, the 35th I believe was on the west side of us, and they were probably the boys that would work their horses day and night. They'd move the whole outfit up to the front lines in the daytime and then at night they'd move them back again. And then the next day they'd move up there again. Well, they just scared the Germans to death. They thought we were moving all of the United States in there against them. So the Allies reinforced things there around Metz. Well, Metz is not a fort; it's a very mountainous district

[44]

and very well fortified all the way around it. About the day before the Armistice, they just marched the heck out of us. We carried nearly a full pack for about 18 miles. I was never so near dead in all my life as I was that night.

JOHNSON: Sounds like an ordeal.

MEADOR: Then we got into Pont-a-Mousson about dusk and there was an old building there, pretty badly shot up. They told us that we could sleep in it that night. Pont-a-Mousson was about as big as Kansas City. "Pont" is a French word for bridge, and "Mousson" was a river. It was the bridge across the Mousson River.

JOHNSON: When did you come back from France?

MEADOR: I got back from France in June, 1919.

JOHNSON: You didn't come back on the George Washington?

MEADOR: No, I came back on the Kaiser's pleasure boat, the Madawaska; it was a right nice boat.

[45]

JOHNSON: Did you hear about Truman receiving a trophy from his men, I think on the way back, and have you ever heard anything about this trophy?

MEADOR: Well, not exactly, but they put on a celebration along the latter part of May for Truman and the other boys that had come back.. I got back too late for the celebration.

JOHNSON: You didn't get in on that?

MEADOR: They didn't know that I had been in the Army.

JOHNSON: Did you ever get involved in any of the veterans’ organizations after the war?

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: Did you meet Truman at any of these veterans’ doings?

MEADOR: No. I joined the Keeney-Norris veterans organization in Belton and I met with them several times. Then they moved it down to Harrisonville

[46]

because there were more fellows who would join up down there. That was a little too far for me to go, so dropped out then.

JOHNSON: Do you remember Harry Truman running for office in 1922?

MEADOR: I remember some things about it.

JOHNSON: Before we say anymore about that, do you recall anything about him and Jacobson running the haberdashery in Kansas City?

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: Did you ever visit the store, or patronize it at all?

MEADOR: No. He lost a lot of money in that store.

JOHNSON: But you never saw the store while it was in operation?

MEADOR: No. No, I never did. I went down to the Palace Clothing Company to buy my clothing. They

[47]

gave me $60 to buy a new suit with when I came back.

JOHNSON: Do you recall when you first met Harry Truman after the war?

MEADOR: Well, I can't say that I did.

JOHNSON: Did you ever personally meet him?

MEADOR: My father did. He and my father were pretty good friends, but I was just a kid.

JOHNSON: What was the connection between your father and Harry Truman?

MEADOR: Just neighbors. Father had voted for him. We nearly always voted the Democrat ticket, except one time we voted for Hoover.

JOHNSON: You say they were neighbors. Your father was living on this farm?

MEADOR: He was living here on this farm and...

JOHNSON: And he had become acquainted with the Trumans

[48]

when they lived over...

MEADOR: It would have been up in the Post Office; he might have met Harry up in the Post Office a few times.

JOHNSON: Of course, Harry moved into Independence when he got married, right after he got married in 1919.

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: When did your father die?

MEADOR: In 1940.

JOHNSON: So he remained a friend of the Trumans right up to his death? Did he write any letters to them, or receive any letters that you know of from the Trumans?

MEADOR: No. My father wasn't much of a letter writer. He wrote me maybe one or two letters while I was over in France.

[49]

JOHNSON: Was he ever involved in any of the campaigns for Harry Truman when he was running for, say, Presiding Judge, or for the Senate?

MEADOR: No.

JOHNSON: He didn't get involved in politics that much.

MEADOR: The only event I recollect was that Harry had built a new road, paved road, called the High Grove Road running east from Main Street in Grandview. They tore out an old iron bridge there across Little Blue and we needed a bridge awful bad up here on Byars Road. Gilbert Strode, John Strode's father, was road overseer and we asked him for the old bridge to put up here on 139th Street, or Byars Road, so that we'd have a way to get across the creek. Well, they told us we could have it, and we volunteered to do some work helping on it. I took a team and a wagon and went down and hauled big bridge irons up here. Spent about a week hauling them up here.

[50]

And father didn't know whether I was doing the right thing or not, so he went down and asked Harry Truman about it, and Harry Truman was Presiding Judge then. Harry gave it to me.

JOHNSON: When was that?

MEADOR: That was after he built the concrete roads.

JOHNSON: We're talking about the period between 1928 and '34.

MEADOR: I would have to look up and see just what the exact date was now.

JOHNSON: So you were involved to that extent in the road building program?

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: Do you remember the signs that were used; they were metal with the outline of the county embossed on the metal. These were the signs that were put up on that road system. Do you

[51]

have any idea if any of those signs still exist and where one might get one?

MEADOR: The sign that was on the bridge was a big iron plate about 18 inches square. I believe it said High Grove Bridge, and Harold Makin got that. He took it off the iron that I'd hauled up here.

JOHNSON: Who would have that now?

MEADOR: John Makin, his son, would know something about that. He lives there in Grandview.

JOHNSON: You don't know of any road signs as such that might exist somewhere?

MEADOR: No, I couldn't say anything about them.

JOHNSON: Do you have any artifacts at all from that road building program?

MEADOR: All I've got is the book -- it's about a 75 or 100 page book -- and I have pictures in it that they put out advertising the road system.

[52]

Mary Truman gave my mother one of those books. I have it yet; my mother was very proud of it.

JOHNSON: This road building program helped make Harry Truman very popular, along with the fact that he did it in a very honest way and as economically as possible.

Did you ever hear of anything contrary to that view?

MEADOR: Of course, Harry had to work with T.J. Pendergast and T.J. Pendergast was selling ready-mix cement. You'd hear various stories back and forth about that.

T.J. Pendergast had Democrat headquarters down there about 9th and Main, and I believe that Harry belonged to that club. But in regard to the clothing business that Harry was in, he got pretty badly in debt there. It also seems as though when they had divided the farm up Mary got 80 acres there west of Truman Corners shopping center, and Vivian got 80 acres beside of it,

[53]

and Harry, I think, got two 80s over towards Kernodle's Lake and also got a good-sized tract across what is now the Cross Gates Development, east of Highway 71. Then, in order to clear himself of debts he had to take out a mortgage on that tract east of 71.

The interesting thing is that two girls in Cass County took the mortgage over on that farm to give Harry the money to pay off his debts. Those were probably the best businessmen in this part of the state -- the best business ladies I should say. One of them died a few years ago and was worth two million dollars. She made more money than Harry did, or Solomon Young.

JOHNSON: I guess so,

MEADOR: I had better not give her name, but I'll show you later how much land they owned in Cass County and still own it. It's over a section of land. Those girls had to get out and act as cowboys and head the cattle over that land; there

[54]

were no fences in those days. But they were hardworking people and very economical. Their father bragged that he could wear his patched overalls to town and they'd all look up to him yet.

JOHNSON: They had the mortgage you say on that part of the farm?

MEADOR: They carried the mortgage on Harry Truman's land there and there was a little question there about them not paying the taxes on it.

JOHNSON: Then that was foreclosed. Is that the land that was foreclosed on?

MEADOR: Well, it seems they sold it on the courthouse steps in order to clear Harry some way; I never knew the details.

JOHNSON: Apparently the school board had loaned $35,000 and they didn't get it paid back. So it was foreclosed and then some friends of Harry Truman's bought it back for them.

[55]

MEADOR: It may be that the Yost girls took that mortgage over from the school board, I don't know, because the school board was building school houses about that time.

JOHNSON: Mary Jane and Martha lived in the farm house apparently even after the farm implements were sold and the cattle and stock were sold in 1919. They lived on that farm until 1940, when there was that foreclosure. Then they moved into Grandview. Do you recall any anecdotes or stories concerning Martha or Martha Jane in the thirties or early forties?

MEADOR: Yes, they moved to a right nice house between the two railroads on High Grove Road. That house had been put up by the Mormons, the Latter Day Saints, rather. Their preacher put the house up; I can't recall his name now. He was a big heavy fellow who weighed about 400 pounds. Evidently he sold it to the Truman family, or the Mormon Church did; I don't know how it worked

[56]

out. They fenced it around with chain link fence; put a lock on the gate, and built a little house on the back for the FBI men to stay in. I think they kept three men there to guard her house. Mary and her mother stayed in that house until her mother passed away. I think her mother broke her hip two times before she finally passed away.

JOHNSON: Did you ever visit Mary or Martha?

MEADOR: Not so much after that. I think before Harry became President and they didn't have her fenced in, that my mother went there and visited with her one day. My mother had a Ross Picolius, that had very pretty red leaves, and she gave one of those to Miss Truman. The photographer took a picture of Grandma Truman and that plant. Then they took the picture up to the White House and had it enlarged. My mother was real proud to think that her flower went to the White House.

JOHNSON: Do you still have the photograph?

[57]

MEADOR: Yes, we have a photograph of it here yet. After the war we didn't get to visit with Mary very much. That was too big a house for Mary and she was not too well. So she bought another new house on 13th street and High Grove Road.

JOHNSON: That was after her mother had died in 1947

MEADOR: I think so, and Mary lived there until she passed away. That was right across the street from were Grandmother Young had lived one time. Maybe some of the old maple trees are there yet. That old house of Grandma Young's wasn't fancy enough for the highbrows around Grandview; they moved it over to 15th Street, and made a rest home for the old folks out of it. Then they got too high tone for that, and they burned it up a year or two ago. There was a picture in the paper of the firemen, standing by and letting it burn.

JOHNSON: And that was the house that Martha...

MEADOR: That was the house that Martha Truman lived in...

[58]

JOHNSON: Way back when she was a child?

MEADOR: Sometime. I've got the date in the deed when they entered that land from the Government, but I can't give you the exact date.

JOHNSON: During the Civil War they must have been living out on one of the farm tracts that they owned, rather than being here, because of that incident with the Red Legs.

MEADOR: I think so, yes. I think so because with all of those 400 head of hogs, they would have had to have had them out here on the farm somewhere. I don't know...

JOHNSON: Do you recall Harry Truman coming back after he was Senator, or after he was President, coming back to Grandview, or to Kansas City, to visit?

MEADOR: He came back one time. About the only time that I was ever very close to him was when they

[59]

dedicated the Baptist Church in 1950. They had Harry Truman come out and make them a speech.

JOHNSON: The President's mother died in July, 1947, but they were afraid that she was going to die in March, when she was very ill. So he came out there for almost two weeks and signed what is called the Truman Doctrine. Do you recall him having a kind of temporary headquarters there in his mother's home in Grandview?

MEADOR: Well, I probably read something in the paper about it and I may have copies of the paper here; I'm not sure.

JOHNSON: But you didn't see him until he came back for the dedication of the Grandview church?

MEADOR: That's the first time I ever saw Harry Truman.

JOHNSON: You heard him give a talk there.

MEADOR: Yes, I heard him give the talk.

[60]

JOHNSON: It was probably an overflow crowd wasn't it?

MEADOR: Yes. I guess we've got a picture of that crowd; I'm not sure.

JOHNSON: Well, did anybody get pictures of the inside of the church, of him speaking, do you know?

MEADOR: I think we do have a picture.

JOHNSON: I've been keeping you now for quite some time here.

MEADOR: That's all right; I can talk as long as my voice holds out. I usually talk until I'm hoarse.

JOHNSON: Well, you've held up very well. Since I do have this picture out on the Halls, do you
know any of the people that were in this picture? Did you know L.C. Hall for instance?

[61]

MEADOR: I sure did. His boys were about my age and I knew them about as well, or better, than any other boys around Grandview.

JOHNSON: Did they ever talk about the Trumans, or did you hear anything secondhand through the Halls?

MEADOR: No, Ruby Hall lived next door to Mary Truman here in Grandview. She could tell you events in Mary's later life more than I could.

JOHNSON: You knew the Arringtons or the Babcocks, or the Slaughters?

MEADOR: The Slaughters I knew pretty well down there at Hickman Mills. I did wiring work for John Slaughter down there.

JOHNSON: Did you ever hear them talk about the Trumans or pass on any stories or information about the Trumans?

MEADOR: Well, no, I think that Ruth Slaughter, Ruth

[62]

Barry, Bob Barry's wife, could tell you more about that than I could. You could get it firsthand that way.

JOHNSON: Did you know any of the Nolands?

MEADOR: Nolands? They were kin to my mother in some way, I couldn't tell you just offhand. The Nolands weren't inclined to talk much about their family history.

JOHNSON: You didn't do much farming then. Well, what did you do after you came back from the Army?

MEADOR: I went back to school until I graduated.

JOHNSON: At Jewell?

MEADOR: At William Jewell; and I was in debt $10 when I graduated. I had to borrow $10 to pay for my cap and gown and diploma.

JOHNSON: What was your major?

MEADOR: Physics and chemistry.

[63]

JOHNSON: What did you do after you got your diploma?

MEADOR: Well, I tried to get a job in a laboratory, in Dr. Cross's laboratory, there in Kansas City. He would have liked to have given me the job but he said, "We stocked up with chemists during the war, and we just can't give you any work."

The Western Electric Company was putting in their first dial phones in Kansas City at that time and they advertised in the paper for your men to learn machine switching. I didn't know what it was, but I was broke and it sounded interesting to me, so I went down there and applied for a job. There were four or five high school graduates who applied for the job at the same time. I had worked on radios quite a bit as my hobby and knew electrical circuits and had taken a course in electrical engineering. I was very much interested in automatic switching of telephones. I would study the blueprints and figure them out. Well, those high school boys -- it was too deep for them. They just said it

[64]

looked like hen scratching. I hadn't been working there in the city very long until they put me teaching night school, trying to teach those high school boys how to read their blueprints.

Well, it was kind of a hopeless job. I'd get one boy out of ten maybe that could make any headway. But they were so well pleased with me that they put me to work on something I didn't know anything about, but I went ahead and tackled it. They sent me up to St. Joe where they were putting in a machine switching job, to inspect it. Well, I got out the DIM book, about as big as a dictionary, about four inches thick, and I'd sit there and read up on it and look the job over. I'd find something to be corrected every once in awhile. Well, the boss out of St. Louis would come by and visit me once in awhile and see what I was doing. I hadn't got that job much more than underway when they sent me down to Wichita Falls, Texas to work on a job down there. From there I went to a new job in Oklahoma City;

[65]

worked amongst the Indians for awhile.

JOHNSON: So you moved away from this area. You said you went to St. Joe?

MEADOR: Yes.

JOHNSON: What year was that?

MEADOR: That was in 1921.

JOHNSON: So you moved away from Jackson County in 1921?

MEADOR: Well, we had our home over there in Liberty. When my brother and sister got ready to go to school, they went over there and bought a house for $1,800. It was a right nice little five room house. They lived in it for four years while my brothers and sisters went to school. My father had done some carpenter work on it and painted and fixed it up, and turned around and sold it for $2,000. So we got our room rent pretty reasonable over there in Liberty just for

[66]

paying the taxes.

JOHNSON: Your father had been farming up to that point, right?

MEADOR: He had been doing carpenter work; he didn't like to farm. He did blacksmith work and carpentry work most of the time. But he had this farm here because his father gave it to him, and it was a good place to live.

JOHNSON: But you actually really quit farming when you started into high school, or when you started to college, I suppose. That was really the end of your farming career, right?

MEADOR: More or less, yes. They wanted to live there in Liberty and sell the farm here, but I persuaded then to hold onto the farm, which made about $40,000 for me, by doing that. It went from $40 an acre up to $1,000 an acre on 40 acres. And now it would sell for $2,000 an acre, but I've sold all of it except the acre where my house is.

[67]

JOHNSON: I see; you just have the acre here.

MEADOR: I just have the acre left. I'm lucky at that to have my own house, because one of my cousins is over at Fox Springs Apartments there by Raymore paying $400 a month for just a two room apartment.

JOHNSON: You went down to Oklahoma you say to work.

MEADOR: I worked there awhile and from there they sent me to Little Rock, Arkansas, to put in a new exchange there. They were putting them in all over the United States just as fast as they could manufacture them. Oh, I was probably there about six months, or maybe a year, in Little Rock. We put in a pretty good-sized exchange. From there they sent me to Atlanta, Georgia. In Atlanta there was panel-type switching and I didn't like it as well as I did the automatic. They made a timekeeper out of me and the boss in the office there.

[68]

From there they sent me down to Jacksonville, Florida. I spent a few days down there; it was just a small job down there. I came back to Massilon, Ohio, which was a new job, I suggested a new process of testing for the Massilon, Ohio job and an estimator came there and worked with me on it. They said we saved them $10,000 on that one job. They were so well-pleased with us that they sent me and the estimator out to Los Angeles and paid our way out there. We worked on a job there in Los Angeles where they were 10,000 subscribers behind on their phones. It was a regular madhouse.

JOHNSON: About what year was that?

MEADOR: That was in 1924. I had been with them four years then. I had got a pretty good education in electricity, more than I could have got in school. Western Electric's information is for employee's use only; they don't tell how all their machinery works. I stayed with them

[69]

there. I worked in the estimator's office for about the last three months I was there in Los Angeles. It was pretty monotonous, just like an adding machine going all day long. I didn't like it so much. So they gave me a vacation, and in order to keep up in good standing with the company I applied for a leave of absence instead of quitting them. They gave me a leave of absence, with the right to come back to work anytime I wanted to. So I came back here to home, and I had been helping my father out, sending money to him. I'd sent him $1,500 and he had found places where he needed to use it, and so instead of paying me back, why, he sold me ten acres of land for 1,500. That gave me a start in the real estate business here.

So I went to work contracting for myself on electrical jobs, and they were building two new lines in Jackson County here then. Kansas City Power and Light Company was building two new lines down Holmes Street, and then the Missouri Public Service Company was building in Belton and

[70]

Raymore and Peculiar. I think they even got down into Hickman Mills a little bit, but the Kansas City Power and Light Company took over the rest of the territory. I got in pretty well with both light companies then, and in those days people were just as afraid of electricity as they are of atomic bombs now. It scared them to death. It was easy for me to get a job, especially if I treated people right and wasn't too high on my prices.

JOHNSON: You were wiring homes?

MEADOR: Homes and school houses, anyplace I could get a job. I turned down one job though for T.J. Pendergast's lieutenant. He was down there at Hickman Mills and it was supposed to be a saloon and dance hall. I knew from experience that they weren't very good people to work for.

JOHNSON: Did you know Jim Pendergast, or the other Pendergasts?

MEADOR: No, I never met them. Jim Rooney was the

[71]

lieutenant that I worked under. I wired a house for him and I found out what he was and I wouldn't touch his dance hall.

JOHNSON: So you did that sort of thing until when?

MEADOR: Until the second war came along, 1940. And they froze up material on me. I couldn't get any wire to work with. I had four rolls of armored cable and one contractor offered me $80 for those four rolls of cable. I used up what cable I had, finishing up. I had four houses going at that time. I used up what cable I had on two of the houses; but the other two houses I just had to let go. Couldn't even finish them, and couldn't collect on them.

In the meantime, a schoolmate of mine, Miss Grace VanBrunt, had started up a garment factory in Belton, and she had to put in some big motors. In fact, she employed 150 girls. Some of the machines were run on a line shaft; a dozen or more machines on one big motor and a line shaft

[72]

underneath. We got in later machines that had individual half horse motors on each machine. Now that was a lot of electrical work. She hired me there for a week or two and finally she says to me, "I want to hire you by the month and keep you all the time," and she practically made an assistant manager of me. I offered to drive her around in her car, and take her to the other jobs. She had a job going on down at Clinton; that was a right good-sized job. Another one was at Rich Hill, which wasn't so big; and there was another job where she took over an old laundry and made a garment factory out of it.

JOHNSON: This was in the early forties?

MEADOR: That was in the forties.

JOHNSON: Senator Truman had formed the so-called Truman Committee and was checking on waste in spending for the military mobilization, new plants and so on. Did you ever hear any stories

[73]

about this committee, or of waste and extravagance in construction of military facilities?

MEADOR: No; only about what I'd read in the paper.

JOHNSON: Fort Leonard Wood was an example apparently of wasteful spending. Did that become quite a scandal at that time, do you recall, in the papers?

MEADOR: Oh my! Lumber was scarce and out in Manhattan, Kansas, where they were building a military camp, they just kept a fire going there day and night burning up scraps of lumber. That's how extravagant they were.

JOHNSON: Were you surprised when he was selected as Vice President?

MEADOR: No; I thought he was darned lucky.

JOHNSON: Nobody expected that, I suppose, did they?

MEADOR: No; we had put Roosevelt in four times as

[74]

president, and expected him to keep going the rest of his life. So they didn't think the Vice president amounted to much.. But the politicians had managed to work Harry in as Vice President.

JOHNSON: What was the reaction around here when the word came out that he was nominated?

MEADOR: Well, of course, everyone around was pretty loyal to Harry because he was a Grandview boy.

JOHNSON: No one had any complaints so far as you know about his record?

MEADOR: No. The only thing about him was that he spoke a good plain language, and everybody knew what he meant. I learned to cuss about as much as he did.

JOHNSON: Then it must have come as an even greater shock when Roosevelt died and suddenly here's Harry Truman, the local boy, President of the United States.

[75]

MEADOR: Yes. Yes, everybody was surprised about that.

JOHNSON: Do you recall some of the reactions of people here at the time that he became President?

MEADOR: Well, there was probably a lot of whooping and hollering down around Pershing Square there in Kansas City, but we saw very little of Harry here.

JOHNSON: Did you see Martha Truman at all in this period, say, the early forties?

MEADOR: No.

JOHNSON: Or Mary Jane?

MEADOR: We'd see Mary Jane pretty regularly.

JOHNSON: Now, were you single through these years, or had you married?

MEADOR: No; I've been single all my life.

[76]

JOHNSON: So that enabled you to travel around a great deal.

MEADOR: Yes, but it gets monotonous traveling around for four years and just living in a suitcase. I might have married a girl out there in Los Angeles. I usually boarded at homes when I knew I was going to be a month or two in a place, and I boarded at a home where there was an old lady and her daughter. They were strict Lutherans, and very nice people, and I'd go to church with the daughter.

JOHNSON: By the way, did you belong to the First Baptist here in Grandview?

MEADOR: The First Baptist, yes.

JOHNSON: Harry Truman kept membership there. Except for the dedication service which you've already mentioned, do you recall ever meeting him or seeing him in the church?

[77]

MEADOR: Never saw him in the church at any time except then, but I'd see Mary nearly every Sunday. She played the piano for them, and a good faithful church member. But Harry had business somewhere else.

JOHNSON: Well, of course, he was in Washington most of those years and then he was in Independence.

MEADOR: I don't know that I ever saw Vivian in church but I think his wife belonged to the Christian Church at Hickman Mills. I visited with Vivian's boys several times, and they are very nice people. One time one of the boys was Jury Commissioner down there and I was called down on a jury. I went in there a little early and talked to him. I told him my mother was sick here at home and I had to get a nurse to stay with her. I couldn't go off and leave her very much. He didn't say very much; he said, "Just go ahead and serve anyhow."

So I went on in to serve and they called out

[78]

24 fellows, I believe, for their first panel; my name wasn't in the list, And they called out another panel; and my name wasn't in the list. So the Judge says, "The rest of you that haven't been called can go down and get your pay and go home."

So I think the Truman boy was responsible for getting me off; but he didn't want it known, you see.

JOHNSON: These are tear sheets of articles on Truman and I notice that some go back to 1921.

MEADOR: They probably do.

JOHNSON: Yes, here's April 23rd, Kansas City Times of 1921.

MEADOR: My aunt, Miss Shelton, there in Grandview saved a lot of these papers for me.

JOHNSON: And then, of course, an issue from 1945. Let's see what else we have here. January.20,

[79]

1949 on the inauguration. There's a labor paper, July 30, 1940, and so on. Some of these are real interesting.

MEADOR: I have a hobby of clipping papers, and I've got a lot around here. I need a file cabinet to keep them in.

JOHNSON: You mentioned that you have copied information from land deeds and other kinds of sources and you have some genealogy: I guess we can look over those materials.

MEADOR: There's the deed to my father's farm here, and that map there shows how it was divided.

JOHNSON: I see Martha E. Truman right here, very dominant. I don't think I can identify, all of these on our tape, but if we can copy some of these, would that be all right?

MEADOR: Yes, if there is material there that you would like to have in your records there in

[80]

the Library.

JOHNSON: Well, sure we would.

I appreciate very much your talking with me, and sharing some of this information.

MEADOR: Well, this is a hobby with me.

Atha Hereford Farm, Jackson County, Missouri, 28

Barry, Ruth, 61-62
Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 39, 42, 45
Belton, Missouri, 1
Blue Ridge Missionary Baptist Church, 22-23
Burlington Railroad, surveys, Omaha to Denver, 1917, 38
Byars, Henry, 7
Byars Road, Jackson County, Missouri, 6, 7, 33, 49

Chiles, Jim Crow, 13, 26-27, 30
Chiles, Sally, 13, 30
Chiles, Sarah, 4
Chiles, Solomon, 4, 7, 13, 14, 15, 28-29
Civil War, Jackson County, Missouri, 9-10, 58
Clements, Ambrose, 17
Clements, David, 25
Clements, John B., 18

Dodson Road, Jackson County, Missouri, 6

Everhart, Laura, 1-2

First Baptist Church, Grandview, Missouri, 76-77
France, U.S. military campaigns, WW I, 39-44

Grandview, Missouri, 12, 23, 24, 26, 27, 30, 33, 57, 59, 61, 76

Hall, Ella, 25
Hall, L.C., 35, 60-61
Hall, Ruby, 61
Harper, George, 19-20
Hays, Grace, 13
High Grove Road, Jackson County, Missouri, 33, 49, 55, 57

Jackson County Advocate, 3
Jackson County, Missouri, "Red Leg" forays, Civil War, 9-10, 58
Jackson County, Missouri, road building program in, 49-52
Jones, Eunice, 23

Kansas City Power and Light Company, 69-70
Kansas City Star, 13

Meador, Drucilla, 14-15
Meador, Henry, 3, 47-48, 50, 65, 66, 69
Meador, John, background, 1-3, 37-39, 62-72
Meador, Maggie, 17
Meador, Paul, 6
Meador, William I., 3, 30-31, 37
Missouri Public Service Company, 69-70

Palestine Baptist Church, Hickman Mills, Missouri, 23
Pendergast, Tom, 52

Red legs, forays in Jackson County, Missouri, 9-10, 58
Rooney, James, 70-71
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 73-74

Shelby County, Kentucky, 5
Strode, Gilbert, 49

Thornton, Genevieve, 23
Truman Committee, 72-73
Truman Corners, 11, 12, 22, 52
Truman, Harry S.:

• • family farm, mortgage on, 53-55
    farmer, ability as, 34-35
    Grandview, Missouri Baptist Church, dedication speech, 59-60
    Grandview, Missouri, visits to; for election news, 24
    horses, handling of, in France, WW I, 36
    Meador, Henry, friendship with, 47-48
    as Postmaster of Grandview, Missouri, 25
    road building program for Jackson County, Missouri, 49-52
    Vice Presidential candidacy, hometown reaction to, 73-74
• Truman Jacobson haberdashery, 46
  Truman, John Anderson, 25-26, 36
  Truman, Martha Young, 10, 15-18, 23-24, 33, 55-58, 59, 75
  Truman, Mary Jane, 12, 23, 52, 55-57, 75, 77
  Truman, Vivian, 10, 52, 77

  Van Brunt, Grace, 71-72

  Waskom, Pierson, 33
  Western Electric Company, 63-64, 67-69
  William Jewell College, 37, 62
  World War I, U.S. military campaigns in France, 36, 39-44

  Young, Harrison, 12, 14, 20, 33-34
  Young, Hattie, 5
  Young, Hiram, 7
  Young, John, 14-15
  Young, Louisa Gregg, 4, 8-9, 33, 57
  Young, Mary, 33
  Young, Michael, 5
  Young, Solomon, 1-2, 3-9, 10, 11-13, 15, 19-21, 30-31, 32, 33
  Young, William, 5, 33-34
  Younger, Cole, 27