♂George Day Curtis

George Day Curtis (25 July 1852 – 21 September 1922) was a bookkeeper in Chicago. He was the grand-uncle of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the elder brother of Hubert Orestes Curtis (1868–1922), who was Roger’s grandfather. His only recorded son was born at Syracuse in 1878, eleven years before a county index gives George Day’s marriage to Elizabeth Valliere, and the records do not name the boy’s mother.

Early life

He was born in New York City on 25 July 1852, a son of Thomas Day Curtis (1824–1896) and Annis Wheaton (1827–1883). The census of 1870 recorded him at Utica working in a paint shop with his brother Frank while their father edited and published a newspaper. At Syracuse in 1875 he was not in his parents’ household, though he was then twenty-two.

Syracuse and Chicago

His son, George Albert Curtis (1878–1925), was recorded in the Cook County birth certificates of his own children as born at Syracuse in 1878. That points to George Day being there in the late 1870s, but no record names the boy’s mother or shows a first marriage. By 1896 George Day was at Chicago, where his father’s obituary placed him with four of his brothers and sisters.

A county marriage index gives his marriage to Elizabeth Valliere (1852–1938) on 9 May 1889, in Cook County; she was born in Canada. A county marriage index gives his age as 37 and hers as 35. No child by Elizabeth is on record. In 1910 the two lived in Chicago’s 35th Ward with his son George, then 32 and single, who is listed as the head’s son. In 1920 the census had George Day, aged 67, as head of a household in the 14th Ward with Elizabeth.

Death

George Day Curtis died at Chicago on 21 September 1922, aged 70, a bookkeeper, and was buried on 23 September in Calvary Cemetery at Evanston. His son George Albert, a laborer, died in 1925. Elizabeth died a widow in Chicago in 1938.

Notes

George Albert’s mother

The 1910 census lists George Albert only as son of the head, and a county index gives Elizabeth Valliere’s marriage to George Day in 1889, when the boy was eleven. His death record of 1925 names his father as “Geo. Day Curtis”. No record names who bore him, and he is placed in a family of his father alone.

Dates and names

The tree first carried his birth as 1854 and his death as 1923, both uncited, and both were corrected; the death records give 25 July 1852 and 21 September 1922. They spell his mother’s name “Wheating”, which is why a Wheaton surname match missed him. His middle name is the maiden surname of Thirza Day, whom the tree gives as the mother of Thomas Day Curtis; no record names Thomas’s parents, and the name is one of the clues for that link. The Cook County index gives Elizabeth’s age in 1889 as 35, the 1938 death record gives her as 83, and the tree keeps 1852 for her birth.