This document, dated March 8, 1845, shows the sale of nine-and-a-half year old Rhoda by Washington Smith to Solomon Young for $150.
Washington Smith was born in Virginia in 1817, eventually settling in Waldron, Platte County, Missouri. He was likely living in Waldron when he sold Rhoda to Solomon Young, President Harry S. Truman’s maternal grandfather. Young and his wife Harriet Louisa Young originally resided in Shelby County, Kentucky before arriving in Jackson County, Missouri in 1841. Young operated wagon trains that headed west from Independence and Westport.
It is hard to say what type of life Rhoda would have had with the Young family. She was most likely enslaved on the Young’s 2,000 acre farm in the Grandview area, working as a nursemaid. According to an oral history interview with John W. Meador, a Young genealogist and cousin of Harry S. Truman, “Before the [Civil] war [the Youngs] evidently had Negro slaves, because every time they’d have a baby they’d turn that baby over to a Negro woman to nurse and take care of it. Sometimes the Negro woman would even breast feed the babies, because Negro women, slaves, usually produced a baby every year for their income.” Truman biographer David McCullough notes that Young owned “three or four [slaves] – a cook, a nursemaid, one or two farmhands.” It was not unusual for young, enslaved girls like Rhoda to care for the children of their enslavers. In 1845, the Youngs had three children that may have required care: Susan, age six, William, age 4, and Sallie, age 2.
Rhoda was probably no longer enslaved by Young by 1850, and had been sold to a different slaveholder. Census records show that Young held two enslaved people that year: a 23-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman. Rhoda would have been 14 or 15 years old. We have been unable to track Rhoda beyond 1845.
View the document in our database
Sources/Further Reading:
“Oral History Interview with John W. Meador.” From the Harry S. Truman Library. Transcript. November 18, 1980. https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/oral-histories/meadorjw (accessed January 28, 2026).
McCullough, David. Truman. Simon & Schuster, 1993.
United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. National Register of Historic Places Inventory — Nomination Form: Young, Solomon, Farm — Truman, Harry S., Farm (National Register Information System ID: 78001650; published May 5, 1978). PDF file. National Park Service. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/17b26f54-cd49-4c6b-9a50-6c12adccad27.
Research completed by Sarah Bader-King, February 3, 2026.
