♂Albert Waterman Curtis

Albert Waterman Curtis (born 28 December 1860) was a man born in Brooklyn who lived at Utica and Syracuse, New York, and, a county marriage index gives, married at fifty-three. A memorial to him describes a career as a newspaper reporter and then a proofreader. He was the grand-uncle of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the brother of his grandfather Hubert Orestes Curtis (1868–1922).

Early life

He was born at Brooklyn, a son of the newspaper editor Thomas Day Curtis (1824–1896) and Annis Wheaton (1827–1883). His father’s work took the family to Chenango County and then to Utica. A transcribed obituary on the memorial says he came to Syracuse with his parents in 1873, and the state census of June 1875 found him there, aged fourteen, a son in his father’s household.

Work

His father’s obituary of 1896 placed him at Utica and called him “the artist of Utica”. The memorial gives his trade differently: a reporter on Utica newspapers, later on Chicago newspapers, and finally a proofreader on the Syracuse Herald. The records give no dates for any of these posts, or for his return to Syracuse.

Marriage and death

A county marriage index gives his marriage to Adelaide Dutcher (1873–1937) on 16 May 1914, in Onondaga County. A county marriage index gives his age as 53 and hers as 41, and names his parents as “Thomas D” and “Annis Wheaton”; it is the record that gives his middle name in full. The memorial styles her “Dr Adelaide Dutcher Curtis”, and the 1925 state census at Syracuse has her as Adelaide Curtis. No child of the marriage is recorded.

The 1930 census index shows “Albert Curtis”, aged 69, head of a Syracuse household with only his wife in it. A Find a Grave memorial gives his death at Syracuse on 6 November 1930, of pneumonia, and his burial in Oakwood Cemetery there. Adelaide outlived him by seven years.

Notes

His middle name

Waterman is also the given name of Waterman Curtis (1793–1859), whom the tree gives as the father of Thomas Day Curtis. No record names Thomas’s parents, and the name carried into this son is one of the clues for that link. The 1914 index is the one document in which the son gives the full name and names Thomas D. as his father.

Dates and gaps

The 1875 census lists the boy as “Albert L.”, and the marriage index gives his birth as about 1861; the tree keeps 28 December 1860 at Brooklyn. Nothing places him between 1880 and 1914 except the memorial’s account of his work, so an earlier marriage is not ruled out.