Born Theresa Hilda Fellman in Newburyport, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of a man who lettered roulette wheels.

[3] She led an active life during the late 1940s, serving as a Camp Fire guardian, a Blue Bird leader, a Horizon Club advisor and an American Youth Hosteler, once leading a group of girls on a ten-day bicycle trip through New England.

Even into her eighties and nineties, Terry continued her teaching at the Art Students League.

[1] Fascinated with the Salem witch trials (and despite the fact that she was Jewish),[1] Terry expressed her belief that she was the reincarnation of Dorcas Good,[1] a four-year-old child who was imprisoned with her accused mother, Sarah Good, who was later executed.

Terry wrote about this double life and her approach to art in her self-published autobiography, Strange Bod Fellows (1992).

It is a New York City landmark that sits at the entrance to Carl Schurz Park and Gracie Mansion.