Archives West Finding Aid

Copy pasteup, research papers, and mutilated original documents used by Stith for the publication of Terry Does Exist. The book is divided into three sections; the establishment of the town of Terry and two sections dealing with the Stith family and their place in Terry's history. When assembling her book, Stith took original letters exchanged by her parents and cut them into pieces to use as facsimile illustrations for printing plates. The letters fragments in folder 6 were the result of this practice and are impossible to collate into proper order.

The Stith family papers consist of collected business files of John W. and Cornelia Stith's professional careers. Cornelia Stith was Postmistress and Sunday School Teacher in Terry for many years and collected listings of Sunday School books and documents dealing with the delivery of mail. John Stith was a respected business man and public servant during his time in Terry. His school clerk records consist of teacher and maintenance contracts, apportionments, and correspondence from 1883 to 1907. John's time as a Custer County commissioner are represented by constituent correspondence, petitions for road and bridge construction and improvements, commissioner journals, and contracts. Stith's Justice of the Peace (JP) files contain case files for minor civil actions brought before the Terry, Montana court regarding cost recovery suits, witness statements and judgments. One folder of JP papers includes bounty warrants for the killing of coyotes, bobcats, and wolves. Stith's business interests in Terry are represented by the balance of the files in this series. They include: real estate transaction papers; insurance sales and correspondence; shipping bills and invoices for wool buying operations; customer and client correspondence; merchandise orders for Stith's hardware store; bank statements and a selection of cancelled checks.

Photographs of the Stith family and friends, Terry residents, and Terry, Montana. Some of these photographs were used by Beryl Stith in Terry Does Exist. In those cases, the page number in parentheses following the photograph title indicates the location of the image in the book.