♂Frank Lionel Curtis

Frank Lionel Curtis (c. 1855 – 9 May 1934) was an American pianist, composer and teacher of the piano who studied in Germany, became head of the music department of Syracuse University in his mid-twenties, and was later compelled by increasing deafness to give up his career as a concert pianist. His semi-classical pieces, among them “Indian Rhapsody”, “The Brook” and “Storm King Mountain”, were still being played on the radio in the 1920s. He was a son of Thomas Day Curtis (1824–1896) and Annis Wheaton (1827–1883), and an elder brother of Hubert Orestes Curtis (1868–1922), grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007).

Early life

He was born in April 1855 or 1856, according to his death record in Brooklyn, New York, where his parents were living by 1860. The census of 1860 lists him as “Frederick”, aged five, in the family’s household in Brooklyn’s 16th Ward. The family then moved to Smyrna in Chenango County, and by 1870 to Utica, where the census that June recorded Frank, aged fifteen, and his elder brother George working in a paint shop while their father edited and published a newspaper. At the New York state census of June 1875 the family was at Syracuse and Frank, aged twenty, was a music teacher.

Syracuse

Both of his obituaries say that he studied music in Germany and was made head of the music department of Syracuse University at about the age of twenty-five; one puts his time there at ten years. By June 1880 the census described him as a “Professor Piano”, and a Yonkers newspaper later remembered him as having headed the piano department at Syracuse “for a long period of years”. His father’s obituary of 1896 called him “Prof. Frank L. Curtis, the musician of Syracuse”.

In 1879 he married Eunice Adeline “Addie” Curtis (1854–1923), a Curtis by birth, the daughter of Edward C. Curtis and his wife Susan. In 1880 the couple lived in her parents’ household in Syracuse’s 8th Ward. Their son Edward Day Curtis was born on 3 November 1880 and carried his grandfather’s middle name, Day. A second son, Kenneth W. Curtis, is recorded in a compiled family tree: born on 12 August 1884, he died on 8 August 1885 in Middletown Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey, and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Syracuse, where Eunice was later buried; the New Jersey record of his death does not name his parents. In 1892 the state census found Eunice and Edward in her parents’ household in Brooklyn, without Frank. In 1900 the three were together again in Syracuse, Frank at the head of the household and the couple described as married for twenty-one years.

By 1910 Eunice was boarding in another household in Syracuse, still recorded as married. No record of a divorce has been found, but on 20 June 1913, while Eunice was still living, Frank married Mabel Robinson Crowl, the daughter of Andrew Crowl and Frances A. Purdy, in Tompkins County, New York. Eunice died at Syracuse on 14 January 1923.

Yonkers and Brooklyn

In January 1914 he advertised in the Yonkers Statesman as “Mr. Frank Lionel Curtis, M. Mus., Pianist, Composer and Teacher”, taking pupils at 82 Hamilton Avenue, Yonkers. He later moved to Brooklyn Heights, where he performed and taught. According to the obituaries, increasing deafness forced him to abandon the concert platform, about ten years before his death, and he continued as an instructor of the pianoforte. His music outlived his playing career: in December 1926 the Commodore Ensemble under Bernhard Levitow played his “Frightened Birds” in a broadcast on the radio station WJZ, and in February 1928 the same ensemble played it again at the Commodore Hotel in New York “by request”, when a Yonkers paper noted that many Yonkers students had studied with him.

His son Edward Day Curtis became a teacher of the classics. He taught at the state normal school at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, married Emma Shriner there on 1 July 1911, and that year resigned to become head of the classical department of the state normal school at Cortland, New York. He and Emma had four children, and he died on 15 April 1966 in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Frank’s nephew Lionel Allen Curtis (1895–1962), a son of his brother Orcus, bore Lionel as his first name.

Death

Frank Lionel Curtis died on Wednesday, 9 May 1934, aged 78, at his home at 101 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, after a long illness from diabetes. A funeral service was held on the evening of Friday, 11 May, at the Walker Chapel, 40 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, and he was buried the next day in Oakwood Cemetery, Syracuse. He was survived by his wife Mabel, his brother Arthur Curtis of Chicago and his sister Mary Ada, then Mrs. Ada Williams of Queens Village.

Notes

The records disagree on his birth. His death record gives 23 April 1856 at Brooklyn; the 1900 census gives April 1855; his 1913 marriage licence implies 1857; and the ages in the 1860, 1870 and 1875 censuses point to 1855. Both obituaries say he was born in Brooklyn. A birthplace of New Orleans has been attached to him from the 1875 state census, but the census page itself gives New York.

The two obituaries, published the same day, differ in details. The Times Union gave his mother as “Anna” Wheaton, his street as “Columbus Heights”, his cemetery as “Greenwood” and his age on taking the Syracuse post as twenty-six; the Brooklyn Eagle gave Annis Wheaton, Columbia Heights, Oakwood Cemetery and twenty-five. Oakwood is the Syracuse cemetery, and Green-Wood the Brooklyn one. An index of the 1875 state census calls him “Frank S”; every other record, and his own advertisement, gives Frank Lionel or Frank L. His death record calls his second wife “Mabel C.”, for Crowl.