I. T. (Ida Treadwell) Thurston

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, on March 12, 1848, and later dying in Washington, D.C., on June 3, 1918, Ida Treadwell Thurston wrote under the name I. T. Thurston. The surviving public record is fairly sparse, but library and catalog sources consistently identify her as an American writer of fiction.

Her best-known work is The Bishop's Shadow (1899), and bibliographic records also connect her with books such as The Big Brother of Sabin Street, The Scout Master of Troop 5, and The Torch Bearer: A Camp Fire Girls' Story. Taken together, those titles suggest a writer interested in young people, character, faith, and social improvement, with stories that often blended entertainment with a clear moral center.

Thurston's work has remained accessible through digital libraries including Project Gutenberg and The Online Books Page, which has helped preserve her place among lesser-known American authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even where details of her life are hard to pin down, her fiction still offers a window into the values and reading tastes of her era.