Harrison Young

Harrison Young was Harry S. Truman’s uncle and a distinctive presence in the Young family: a large, generous, talkative man whose enjoyment of city life contrasted with the more settled world around Truman. He was both an entertaining visitor and a practical family member, returning to help after the Young homeplace was destroyed by fire.

Place in the Young Household

When Harry S. Truman began forming his earliest impressions at the Young homeplace, the household gathered three generations beneath one roof. It usually numbered at least fourteen or fifteen, including Solomon Young and Harriet Louisa Young, Truman’s parents, his grandfather Anderson Truman, several working hands, and visiting relatives and neighborhood children. Harrison, then a bachelor, was among those who remained part of this crowded family setting.

Harrison’s place in Truman’s life became especially visible through his visits from Kansas City. He came often, ready with stories and eager to challenge his nephew at double dummy bridge. The visits brought a markedly different personality into Truman’s rural surroundings: Harrison enjoyed the bustle and pleasures of the city, and was unlike anyone Truman knew in Grandview.

A Vivid and Unconventional Uncle

Truman remembered Harrison as a character: six feet tall, extremely stout, and estimated by Truman to weigh about 240 pounds. He dressed in good three-piece suits, wore a gold watch chain, and carried plenty of cash. His imposing appearance went with an equally expansive manner—he was talkative, profane, and generous-spirited, and took pleasure in loafing as well as in telling stories about the things he enjoyed.

His tastes made him a lively counterpoint to the life of the homeplace. Harrison loved vaudeville and gambling, enjoyed the company of women in Kansas City, and drank considerably. He also tried to bring Truman into his enthusiasms, including teaching him a dance step called the Pigeon Wing. Even his less glamorous habits became part of the family portrait: asleep on the couch, he snored loudly enough for Truman to remark on it.

Family Responsibility and Truman’s Education

Harrison was not only a source of amusement. After Solomon Young died in 1892, a coal-oil lamp accidentally started a fire that burned the Young house to the ground less than a year later. Almost nothing was saved. A small temporary house was built for Harriet Louisa Young on the same spot, and Harrison returned to help manage the family’s affairs. His presence thus linked the lively uncle of Truman’s recollections with the practical demands that followed the loss of the old home.

Truman recalled that the family tended to worry, while Harrison said he left the worrying to other people. The contrast became part of what Truman understood himself to learn from his uncle. Harrison was, in Truman’s recollection, part of his education: not through formal instruction, but through the example of a relative who approached life with conspicuous ease, appetite, and confidence. His visits and his return after the fire gave that example both a social and a family dimension.