Archives West Finding Aid

The Phelps papers consist of three folders of personal papers and three newspaper clipping scrapbooks created or collected by Cassandra O. Phelps. The first folder includes the inaugural meeting minutes of the Judith Basin County Chapter of the American Pioneer Trails Association, May 29, 1945, along with letters exchanged between Phelps and the Montana Council of the organization and other parties concerned with the organization's activities. A few related pamphlets and brochures are included. The second folder contains two letters written to Walter G. Phelps in response to his 1926 research inquiries regarding the National Industrial Conference Board and typed transcriptions of articles dealing with farm foreclosures and the related radical political stance taken by many hard-pressed dryland farmers in Montana and elsewhere. The third folder contains laid-in newspaper clippings removed from the three scrapbooks. The first scrapbook volume is actually the Saddlery Catalog No. 102 , Marshall-Wells Hardware Company, Duluth, Minnesota. The articles pasted within its pages deal almost entirely with farm foreclosures during the mid-1920s in Montana and elsewhere, but many pages were left intact with illustrations and pricing of horse harness equipment circa 1915. Scrapbook number two is actually a volume of daily business statements published by the National Cash Register company recording transactions of an unidentified business in 1914. Again, most of the pages have been pasted over with newspaper clippings, mostly dealing with general Montana history, the vigilantes of 1863-1864, Charles M. Russell, and the battle of the Little Bighorn. However, some pages in this book were left intact with the financial information visible. The third scrapbook is an account ledger from an unidentified business whose pages are almost entirely obscured with newspaper clippings, again dealing with general Montana history.