February 17, 1924

Margaret Truman (February 17, 1924 to January 29, 2008) was the pretty and only child of the man who became a US President, Harry Truman. She married a New York Times reporter. Margaret Truman wrote a number of books referencing the place where her father achieved his greatest fame, Washington and the White House. A series of mystery stories appeared regularly after 1980. These include Murder in the Smithsonian (1983), Murder at the Library of Congress (1998), and Murder at the National Gallery (1996). These titles do not represent an interest in the humanities: glancing at her bibliography we see she has a story for almost every single Washington tourist destination.

She also wrote biographies of her mother and father. And The President's House: 1800 to the Present The Secrets and History of the World's Most Famous Home (2005). Calvin Coolidge's menagerie in the White House is not a secret, but we get more details when Truman mentions two of Coolidge's cats. 'Tiger' was a stray who wandered into the White House, and 'Blacky' was sent to President Coolidge by a nurse in Massachusetts who explained she had no room for the cat.  Good insider information to keep.