Wallace, Helen Papers

The papers of Helen Wallace include copies of personal correspondence with family members and friends regarding various subjects over the span of seven decades.

Size: Less than one linear foot (about 600 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: The Truman Library has received no donation of copyright for these papers.
Processed by: David Clark, Erica Flanagan (2008); David Clark (2013).

Born March 4, 1896 in Independence, Missouri, Helen Wallace lived most of her life in Kansas City and Liberty. She was the daughter of Myra Gates Wallace and first cousin of Bess W. Truman. Helen Wallace worked as a teacher at McCoy Elementary School in Independence, and also for the Internal Revenue Service. Ms. Wallace moved to La Canada, California in the late 1960s, and she passed away there on July 23, 1971.

The Papers of Helen Wallace include copies of personal correspondence with friends and family members over the span of seven decades. Some of the various topics discussed include service in World War I, women’s voting rights, and politics in Clay County, Missouri. The collection includes several letters from Helen Ferris who wrote from China in 1938. In her letters, Ferris wrote about the Chinese Communists and Chiang Kai-Shek, bombings, the Japanese invasion of China, worries over food and resource shortages, cholera, and refugees. Also included are copies of family portraits and a photograph of the Gates-Wallace mansion at 219 North Delaware in Independence.

Among the family members whose letters are included in the collection are Bess W. Truman and Margaret Truman, cousins to Helen Wallace; her father, Theodoric Boulware Wallace; her mother, Myra Gates Wallace; her aunt, Madge Gates Wallace; her brother, John Wallace; and her grandmother, Elizabeth Emery Gates.