Harry Truman

	BOYHOOD HOME (top left): "The Farm" in Grandview MO - wood frame home of maternal grandparents on a 600 acre farm south of Kansas City PHOTO CREDIT: Homes and Libraries of the Presidents by William G. Clotworthy BIRTHPLACE (left center): Lamar MO - a small six-room, 1½-story cottage, where the bedroom in which Truman was born was only 6'6" x 10'9" PHOTO CREDIT: unknown PRIMARY HOME (right): 219 North Delaware Street , Independence MO - 19th century Victorian manor with 14 rooms, including 7 bedrooms and a music room PHOTO CREDIT: Harry Truman Presidential Library and Museum, Independence MO MODEL of the TRUMAN HOME in Independence, MO Harry Truman Presidential Library and Museum, Independence MO

"This is where I belong."

Our 33rd president lived in a succession of Missouri farms and homes in Independence as the Truman family's financial success ebbed and flowed. When Harry's dream of college was wiped out by a disastrous family investment, he turned to work as a clerk, a piano player, and farm manager before joining the Army in World War I.

After the war he married his sweetheart Bess Wallace, and the couple settled into her childhood home with her widowed mother. The house, built by Bess' grandfather in 1885, was a high-ceilinged Victorian with seven bedrooms. Tile fireplaces, heavy mahogany and walnut furniture, and colored glass windows reflected Midwest prosperity of the 19 th century.

Harry walked a mile or two each morning, moving briskly at 120 paces per minute. When Truman returned to Independence after his presidency, his walks continued while being monitored by Secret Service cameras mounted on buildings along the route!

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