Compton Family Papers

Friends and Neighbors of Harry S. Truman, Independence, Missouri

The Compton Family Papers include correspondence, printed materials, and photographs from the family scrapbook. These materials mostly concern Louis L. Compton's soda pop business, and his family's relations with their neighbors, President Harry S. Truman and his family.

Size: 2.5 linear inches (about 200 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: Roxanne Brennan gave to the U.S. government the copyrights in this material and in any other material received by the U.S. government and maintained in a depository administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Documents created by U.S. government officials in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Kevin Ploth (2016) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

Louis L. "Polly" Compton was born in Independence, Missouri on February 17, 1897. From 1923 until his retirement in 1945, Compton owned the Independence Bottling Company, which produced a favorite local beverage, "Polly's Pops." In 1940, he moved into a house at 318 North Delaware in Independence, not far from the home of Harry S. Truman at 219 North Delaware. Compton, his wife Dorothea, their daughter Dorsy Lou Warr, and their granddaughter Roxanne Brennan were friends of Mr. and Mrs. Truman and their daughter Margaret. Polly Compton died on December 5, 1985

The Papers of the Compton Family include correspondence, printed materials, and photographs from the Compton family scrapbook. These materials mostly concern Louis L. Compton's relationship with President Harry S. Truman; his soda pop business; and connections between the Truman and Compton families.

The collection is arranged into a single series, the Subject File. The Subject File contains correspondence from President Truman, First Lady Bess Truman, and Margaret Truman. Some of the correspondence concerns Compton's generous gifts and the "Harpie Club," a group of poker-playing Independence businessmen, organized around 1925, whose members included Truman and Compton. Also included are printed materials such as newspaper articles about President Truman and Mr. Compton, programs from President Truman's funeral, holiday greeting cards, and invitations from the Truman family for weddings, funerals, and Truman's Inauguration. There are also photographs of the Compton family and Margaret Truman.

Other manuscript collections at the Truman Library relating to friends of the Trumans in Independence include the papers of Rufus Burrus, Mary Paxton Keeley, and Mary Ethel Noland.