♂Hubert Orestes Curtis

Hubert Orestes Curtis (21 August 1868 – 14 December 1922) was an American printer of Chicago, Illinois, and the grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007). His son Frederic Arthur Curtis (1903–1990) was Roger’s father.

Early life

He was born at Utica, Oneida County, New York, the son of Thomas Day Curtis (1824–1896) and Annis Wheaton (1827–1883). The 1875 state census records the family at Syracuse, and an index to the 1880 census places him back at Utica in his parents’ household. His middle name came from Greek legend, in which Orestes is the son of Agamemnon; an elder brother, born in 1865, was named Orcus Allen, after the Roman god of the underworld.

Chicago

He settled in Chicago, where his father’s obituary of 1896 placed him and his brother Arthur. On 26 April 1898 he enlisted as a private in Company A of the 1st Illinois Infantry for the Spanish–American War, and he was discharged on 17 November of that year. On 11 October 1899, in Lake County, Illinois, he married Emily Josephine Phipps (1868–1919), the daughter of William Bennett Phipps, an English-born upholsterer who had served in the Confederate army. The 1900 census, indexed under the name Herbert, finds the couple at Hegewisch on Chicago’s far South Side, married one year. They had two children, Bessie Wheaton Curtis (1901–1980) and Frederic Arthur Curtis. The 1910 census records him as a printer and head of a household in the city’s 32nd Ward on the South Side; the 1920 census records him at the same trade and address, widowed, Emily having died in 1919.

He was a Freemason, a member of Normal Park Lodge No. 797.

Death

He died at the German Deaconess Hospital in Chicago on 14 December 1922, aged 54, of pernicious anemia, with chronic myocarditis contributing. His son Frederic A. Curtis gave the particulars for the death certificate, which lists him as a widowed printer living at 7142 Eggleston Avenue. The Chicago Tribune of 17 December announced the funeral: services at the chapel at 63rd Street and Harvard Avenue on Monday 18 December at three o’clock, under the auspices of the lodge, with interment at Oak Woods Cemetery. The notice names his daughter as Mrs J. H. Bonney, his son Frederic A. Curtis and his brother Arthur L. Curtis. The Southtown Economist repeated the notice on 22 December.

Notes

The Illinois marriage index gives the date and county of the 1899 marriage. The 1880 and 1900 census entries are from the FamilySearch index, not from the pages themselves; the 1880 entry spells the family name Curtiss and the 1900 entry spells his given name Herbert. His military card is in the Veterans Administration master index, and the Illinois Spanish–American War veterans database agrees. A pension file may exist at the National Archives; it has not been seen.