Thomas H. Stout
1879 – 1965

Inducted August 18, 1973

Early in 1902 Tom Stout, a 22-year-old attorney and former teacher, asked a Hannibal, Mo., railway agent how far $25 would take him. The agent said he could travel to Billings, Mont., at the homesteader’s fare of $21.85, and on Easter Sunday Stout stepped off the train at that city in eastern Montana, where he would become prominent as a newspaperman, historian and politician.

Stout was born May 20, 1879, in New London, a small county seat in northeastern Missouri. He was graduated from Warrnesbug State Normal School and the University of Missouri.

When he arrived in Montana in March 1902, Stout “instinctively turned to journalism as a preferred profession,” becoming a reporter for the Billings Evening Journal. He became a member of the Montana bar in 1913 but never practiced law in the state.

In November 1902, Stout moved to Lewistown, where he would spend much of the next 44 years. He helped establish the Lewistown Fergus County Democrat in 1904. One year later he bought out his partner and incorporated the business as the Democrat Publishing Co. and the Democrat-News Publishing Co. He served as editor and publisher of the Democrat-News (now the Lewistown News-Argus) until 1946.
Stout joined the Billings Gazette in 1947 as an editorial writer, a position he held until he retired in 1960.

He became active in Democratic politics soon after moving to Montana. He served as a state senator in 1911 and 1913, and he introduced a resolution that helped give women the right to vote in Montana.

In 1913 he resigned as state senator to become Montana’s representative-at-large in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected to the same post in 1914. He did not seek re-election in 1916. In 1930 he became a member of the Montana Railroad and Public Service Commission, serving until 1932. At age 63, he again was elected to the Montana Legislature, this time as a representative. He was re-elected in 1944 and 1946.

In 1921 the American Historical Society published its three-volume, 1,449-page “Montana, Its History and Biography,” which was compiled under Stout’s editorial supervision.

Stout died in Billings Dec. 26, 1965, at age 86.

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