Ohio History Journal

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HENRY B

HENRY B. CURTIS.

 

A MEMORIAL ADDRESS.1

AT the re-organization of this Society in March, 1885,

Hon. Henry B. Curtis, of Mt. Vernon, was elected as its

First Vice President.

It is now our sad duty formally to announce the death of

Mr. Curtis, which occurred on the fifth day of last November

at the residence of his grand-daughter, Mrs. Charles D. See-

berger, in the City of Chicago, Ill., where he was stopping

for a few days on his way home from a business trip farther

West.

Upon this occasion it is eminently fit that we should briefly

bring to mind the life, character and public services of our

deceased friend and associate.

Mr. Curtis was born near the village of Champlain on the

west side of Lake Champlain, New York, November 28th,

1799, just two weeks before the death of George Wash-

ington.

His parents, Zarah Curtis and Phalley Yale Curtis, were

natives of Connecticut-his father a soldier in the Revolu-

tionary War.

In 1809 the Curtis family removed to Newark, Ohio-then

but a small hamlet of fifty or sixty rude houses, mostly log

cabins-and a few years later took up their residence upon a

farm near by on the south fork of Licking River, where they

continued to reside when Henry left home, at the age of

seventeen years, to join his older brother, Hosmer, who was

then a practicing lawyer at Mount Vernon in Knox county.

At this time, notwithstanding the meager facilities for an ed-

ucation incident to the frontier,-and the duties of farm life in

a new and heavily timbered country-he had, by the same

unceasing industry that characterized his after life, acquired

an English education, then considered quite liberal, and some

knowledge of the classics.  With this preparation for the

1Delivered February l8th, 1886, before the Ohio Archaeological and His-

torical Society, of which Mr. Curtis was First Vice President.

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