Margaret Truman kidnapping attempt

The Margaret Truman kidnapping attempt was an unsuccessful effort to take six-year-old Margaret Truman Daniel from her classroom on the eve of election day in 1930. A teacher’s attention to an unusual detail stopped the stranger before he could reach the child, but the man disappeared, leaving the Trumans unsure whether the attempt had a political connection and prompting heightened protection for Margaret.

The Attempt at Bryant School

On the afternoon of Monday, November 3, 1930, a middle-aged man wearing his hat entered Margaret’s first-grade classroom at Bryant School on River Boulevard, four blocks from home. He said he had come to collect Judge Harry S. Truman’s child, calling her Mary Margaret. Her teacher, Madeline Etzenhouser, was struck by both the unfamiliar name—Margaret was never called Mary Margaret at school—and the fact that Mrs. Truman or one of Margaret’s uncles ordinarily picked her up.

Etzenhouser told the man to wait while she went to the principal’s office. When she returned, he had vanished. Bess Wallace Truman arrived minutes later in a panic, apparently fearing that Margaret was missing; she was relieved to find her daughter safe. Harry S. Truman and several deputy sheriffs arrived soon afterward, and the incident caused a commotion at the school.

Security and Unanswered Questions

The next day, election day, Harry was out visiting precinct polls across the county. Margaret and Bess, accompanied by deputy sheriffs, spent the day at a hotel in town under close security. The available account does not establish who the stranger was or why he sought to take Margaret. The Trumans could only wonder whether the attempt was connected to politics; they learned nothing further.

Margaret was watched closely thereafter. The account also records that the Trumans felt the tragedy of the Lindbergh kidnapping deeply two years later, placing the unresolved school incident in the shadow of a later, more notorious kidnapping. The attempt itself had ended without Margaret being taken, but its uncertainty shaped the precautions surrounding her afterward.