♀Lydia Curtis

Lydia Curtis (born 29 December 1751) was the youngest of the six children of Zebulon and Lydia Curtis of Torrington, Connecticut, and is named “Lydia Holmes” in her father’s will of 1790. She was the fourth great-grand-aunt of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the sister of his fourth great-grandfather John Curtis (1748–1790).

Early life

Lydia was born at Torrington on 29 December 1751, the daughter of Zebulon Curtis (1710–1798) and Lydia Cole (1709–1776), who had married at Farmington on 3 July 1735. They had six children, born between 1737 and 1751: Elizabeth, Thomas, Marcy, Job, John and Lydia. The same page of the Torrington town book that enters her birth records her mother’s death on 22 June 1776, when Lydia was twenty-four.

Marriage and later life

A compiled abstract of Torrington records gives her marriage on 9 September 1778 to Joseph Holmes, both of Torrington. Her married name also appears in her father’s will, made on 30 June 1790, which calls her “my Daughter Lydia Holmes” and names her, with her sister Elizabeth and the children of her late sister Marcy, among his heirs. Zebulon gave his two sons double the share of each daughter, and Marcy’s children together counted as one daughter.

The tree gives her death as 31 October 1820 at Winchester, Litchfield County, and a compiled genealogy agrees on the date. No record documents the date or the place.