♂Thomas Curtis Jr

Thomas Curtis (about 1598 – 13 November 1681) was a settler of Wethersfield in the Connecticut Colony^W whose children, when they divided his estate, agreed to enlarge their brother Joseph’s share for “the service that Joseph Curtice & his wife have done for their father during his life”. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Joseph Curtis (1644–1683).

Origins and marriage

Compiled sources give his birth in England in 1598. The year comes from a marriage index that took it from a pedigree chart, and no baptism record is cited for it. A family pedigree chart compiled in 1994 names his birthplace as Ash, near Sandwich, in Kent, but gives no source for it.

His parents are not known. Family trees make him the son of a Thomas Curtis of Nazing, in Essex, and a grandson of William and Agnes Curtis, but that descent rests on family group sheets submitted by private individuals, and no record confirms it. The Nazing family itself is real: William Curtis of Nazing made his will in 1585, naming his wife Agnes and his eldest son Thomas. A genealogy of the Curtis family of Stratford, Connecticut, published in 1953, prints that will to trace a different emigrant, William’s youngest son John, whose widow and sons moved from Wethersfield to Stratford in 1639. The same book states that there was “another man, Thomas Curtis, who for years did remain at Wethersfield”, and does not count him among its own family.

His wife was Elizabeth Salmon (1612–1681). A standard printed index of early New England marriages gives the Wethersfield couple as “Thomas (-1681) & Elizabeth”, with her surname unknown, and dates the marriage only to before 1639/40. A London marriage register records a wedding on 17 August 1635 between “Thomas Curtis & Elizabeth Gardner”, which an index of extracted Middlesex parish records places at St Katharine by the Tower^W. The entry gives only the two names and the day, with no parish, residence, age or parents, so nothing on it shows that this is the same couple who later lived at Wethersfield.

Wethersfield

By 1644 he was living at Wethersfield, where the town book records the birth of his son Joseph on “the last day” of March that year.

Death and estate

A printed digest of the Hartford probate records gives his death at Wethersfield on 13 November 1681. A grave index gives the same date and his burial there. He left no will. His inventory, taken on 9 December 1681 by Nathaniel Borman, Samuel Butler and William Warner, came to £717 13s. 9d.

The digest names seven children: John, James, Joseph, Samuel and Isaac Curtice, Ruth Kimberly and Elizabeth Stoddor. They settled the estate among themselves in a written agreement, dated 6 March 1681/82 and entered in the Hartford probate records, signed by John, James, Joseph and Samuel and by the two daughters’ husbands, Eleazer Kimberly and John Stodder. John, who had already received housing and land worth £123, was to have £57 more. Samuel had already received his full portion from his father by a deed of gift and took nothing further. The rest was to be shared equally among James, Joseph, Isaac, Ruth and Elizabeth, counting what each had already been given. The children then agreed to raise Joseph’s portion to £140 because he and his wife had cared for their father, the extra coming out of the other shares, Samuel’s excepted. On 2 March 1681/82 the county court granted administration to John, Joseph, James and Isaac, and appointed Mr. Kimberly, Lieutenant James Treat, Steven Chester and Samuel Woolcott to divide the estate as the children had agreed. The agreement makes no provision for a widow and does not mention one. Joseph died two years after his father, on 31 December 1683.

Notes

A grave index styles him “Dr Thomas Curtis Jr”, and a compiled online genealogy mentions a tradition that he was a physician. The probate digest does not call him a doctor, and no father of the same name has been identified to explain the “Jr”.