Schlichenmaier, Frances M. Papers

Assistant in the Office of Harry S. Truman, 1951-1973

The papers of Frances M. Schlichenmaier consist of menus from the travels of Harry S. Truman during the 1952 campaign. The papers also include campaign buttons and other items.

Size: Less than one linear foot (about 40 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: No donation of copyright was received with this collection. Documents created by U.S. government employees 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: Elizabeth Carrington (2005) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

The Frances Schlichenmaier Papers are comprised largely of menus from the trains President Harry S. Truman took on his travels across the nation during the 1952 campaign. Truman did not run for reelection in 1952, but he campaigned extensively for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Adlai E. Stevenson. The collection also contains the campaign buttons of Stevenson and other politicians, a thimble, and some “Harry S. Truman Foundation” coins, dated 1949. The collection is comprised of one series, a Subject File, arranged alphabetically by subject and thereunder chronologically.

Frances M. Schlichenmaier was hired by Rose Conway in 1951 to serve as an assistant to President Truman. She traveled with Truman on his 1952 campaign train helping to proofread speeches. Schlichenmaier continued to work as an assistant to Truman in Independence, Missouri after he left office, and did not retire from her position until shortly after Truman’s death, in 1973.

The menus included in the collection outline the cities Truman visited, the various railways he used, and the variety of meals he ate along the campaign trail. Among Truman’s campaign stops were Chicago, Illinois; Cincinnati, Ohio; Seattle, Washington; San Francisco, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; St. Louis, Missouri; and New York City, New York. Some of the rail lines he rode were the Great Northern Railway, Southern Pacific, Burlington Railroad, New York Central System, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the Missouri Pacific Lines. The meals on the trains varied from breakfast and lunch to full dinner meals. A typical dinner on the trip would have included a soup, entrée, vegetable, dessert, and drink for an all-inclusive price averaging around $3.

The buttons included in the collection come from the campaigns of various politicians. Among the politicians represented on the buttons are Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman from the 1952 campaign and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1960. The thimble promotes the Democratic Party. The coins in the collection have Truman’s face engraved within a Missouri “good luck” muleshoe. The “Harry S. Truman Foundation” was an early attempt to raise money for the construction of the Truman Library.