Identity elements
Reference code
Name and location of repository
Level of description
Collection
Title
Cassius C. Stiles Papers
Date(s)
- Undated (Creation)
Extent
0.50
Name of creator
Biographical history
Cassius C. Stiles, born in 1860 in Madison County, Iowa, worked early on as a schoolteacher and then later as the deputy auditor in his home town. In 1907 he was appointed as superintendent to a new division of the State Government to help establish the Public Archives of Iowa, an assignment he served for the next thirty years. In this time he sorted, filed and indexed almost 9 million records pertaining to the Capitol Commission and in the process of doing so, pioneered a new system of subdividing archival material that later greatly simplified the recalling of documents from the archives. The immense effort of Stiles' project placed Iowa as the foremost state in cataloguing materials, and, for the first time, under the direction of Stiles, a comprehensive index of the material belonging to an archive was published.
Content and structure elements
Scope and content
Consists mostly of correspondence relating to Mr. Stiles. The material is both business related and personal in nature, including several articles written by Stiles, a series of request and thank you letters for copies of his book, Manual of Public Archives of Iowa, work recommendations, literature relating to the American Historical Association, general correspondence and a paper written by Fleming C. Fraker, Cassius C. Stiles and the Public Archives of Iowa.
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use elements
Conditions governing access
Open for research.