♂Lionel Allen Curtis

Lionel Allen Curtis (26 June 1895 – 1 October 1962) was an American salesman and clerk, born at Buffalo, New York, who in 1920 was travelling in Mexico as a salesman for the American Crayon Company, with a territory that ran through Central America, northern South America and the Caribbean. He was married three times and spent most of his adult life in Chicago. He was a grandson of Thomas Day Curtis (1824–1896) and Annis Wheaton (1827–1883), and a nephew of Hubert Orestes Curtis (1868–1922), grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007).

Early life

He was born at Buffalo, Erie County, New York, the son of Orcus Allen Curtis and Anna M. Fagan, and their only child found in the records. He carried his father’s middle name, Allen, and the middle name of his uncle Frank Lionel Curtis. In June 1900 the family lived in Buffalo’s 20th Ward: his father was 35 and born in New York, his mother 33 and born in Canada, and the census noted that the couple had been married six years. The New York state census of 1905 found them still in Buffalo, with the boy, then nine.

Traveling salesman

He registered for the First World War draft at Chicago in 1917 or 1918, giving his full name and his birth at Buffalo. A Veterans Administration index lists him as a veteran, with a service date of 21 April 1919 at Chicago. On 20 May 1919 he was issued a passport.

By 1919 he had married Eva L. Paez, born in 1901 at Nogales, Arizona, and on 29 December 1919 twin daughters were born at Los Angeles. The census of January 1920 found the family at Manhattan Beach, Los Angeles County: he was 23, Eva 18, and the twins were infants. In October 1920 Eva, then at Nogales, swore a passport application of her own, stating that her husband was “now travelling in Mexico” and that he was a traveling salesman for the American Crayon Company, whose route she listed as Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, the three Guianas, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica. She asked for a passport to travel from Chihuahua to Guadalajara to be with him. The same year the twin Eileen died at Nogales. No record of the end of the marriage has been found. Nine years later, in 1929, he arrived at New Orleans by sea, aged 33.

Chicago

At the Second World War registration of 1942 he was living in Chicago and working for himself. A Minneapolis newspaper of 28 June 1945 listed a marriage licence application by “Lionel A. Curtis, 50, Denver, Colo.” and “Norma Cullen Lucas, 52, Chicago, Ill.”; the notice records the application, not the wedding itself. Norma R. Lucas had been born on 6 January 1893 at Bucyrus, Ohio, and worked as a private secretary. She died at Chicago on 6 April 1946, less than a year later, and her death record names her husband as Lionel Allen Curtis. She was buried in Acacia Park Cemetery.

He married for a third time soon after, to Ruth T., born about 1918 in Kentucky. By April 1950 the marriage had ended in divorce, and Ruth was heading her own household in Chicago, working as a secretary at a private school.

Lionel Allen Curtis died at Chicago on 1 October 1962, aged 67, at 1429 North Clark Street. His death record describes him as a clerk and as divorced, gives his parents as “Orus A Curtis” and “Anna Fegan”, and also names Ruth T. Curtis. He was buried on 5 October 1962 in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago.

Notes

The census takers of 1905 and 1920 wrote his name as “Leon L.”; every record he signed or supplied himself calls him Lionel Allen, and his wife’s passport application and his daughter’s death record give “Lionel A.” and “L. A.”. The records also disagree on his birth year. The 1900 census and his First World War draft card give June 1896, while his 1942 draft card, his death record and the Social Security death index give 26 June 1895, and the Veterans Administration index gives 1894. The 1945 licence application calls him 50, two days after his fiftieth birthday on the 1895 date, which is the year followed here.

He does not appear in any indexed census of 1930 or 1940, perhaps because he was abroad for part of those years. How the 1945 licence application came to be made in Minnesota, by a man then giving his residence as Denver, is not explained by the records. The newspaper gives his second wife’s name as “Norma Cullen Lucas”; the records do not say whether Cullen was a family name or the surname of an earlier marriage. Ruth’s maiden name has not been found.