Hilda Terry

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.

1943 cartoon for the Office of War Information
Sketches of Hilda Terry by her husband, Gregory d'Alessio