♂Thomas Curtis

Thomas Curtis (24 November 1680 – 20 January 1751/2) was a colonist of the Connecticut Colony^W who left Wethersfield for Farmington within a few years of his marriage, raised ten children there, and died a captain at Torrington, where his son Zebulon had settled before him. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Zebulon Curtis (1710–1798).

Early life

Thomas Curtis was very probably the boy born at Wethersfield on 24 November 1680 to Joseph Curtis (1644–1683) and Mercy Deming (1651–1714), though no record of his adult life names his father. His father died on the last day of 1683, when Thomas was three, and the inventory of the estate listed him among five young children. The land was divided only on 27 April 1699, when he was eighteen. The three men the court had appointed, John Curtis, John Deming senior and Ebenezer Deming senior, gave him, as “the second son”, an acre in the great meadow and a little over two acres in the dry swamp, next to the equal share of his younger brother David. Their elder brother Joseph, as eldest son, took a double portion.

Marriage and Farmington

On 30 December 1703, at Wethersfield, Thomas Curtis married Mary Goodrich (born 1682), the daughter of John Goodrich; the town book records that the Rev. Stephen Mix performed the ceremony. On 25 April 1706 the same minister married her younger sister Abigail to Thomas’s brother David, so that two Goodrich sisters were married to two Curtis brothers.

A history of Wethersfield published in 1904 records that Thomas bought land at Farmington from Benjamin Judd on 23 February 1703/4, less than two months after the wedding. The couple’s first child, Rebecca, was born at Wethersfield on 28 April 1705, but by 1708 the family was living at Farmington, where nine more children were born between 1708 and 1727: Sibbel, Zebulon, Elnathan, Thomas, Mary, Prudence, Lydia, Lois and Marcy. The younger Thomas died in June 1726, aged eleven.

The same history records that he was a selectman^W, a deputy to the General Court^W, and a captain in the regiment of Major Roger Wolcott^W. The colony’s records show the General Assembly confirming him captain of the Kensington trainband in May 1732, and name him deputy for Farmington in October 1735. In July 1741 the Hartford probate court appointed him, with Deacon Anthony Judd and Joseph Smith of Farmington, to divide the lands Simon Wrotham had left to his heirs, and in April 1744 it named “Capt. Thomas Curtiss, of Farmington” one of three men to set out the dower^W of Grace Goodrich, widow of Benjamin Goodrich of Wethersfield.

Torrington and death

According to a history of Torrington published in 1878, his son-in-law Ebenezer North, who had married his daughter Sibbel in 1730, came from Farmington in the spring of 1741 and bought two farms at Torrington in company with Zebulon. Thomas was still of Farmington in 1744, but he soon followed them. The 1904 history cites a deed of 1746 in which he is described as lately of Farmington and now of Torrington. It was witnessed by another son-in-law, Daniel Dewey, the husband of his daughter Rebecca. The colony’s records name him a selectman of Torrington in 1747.

Thomas Curtis died at Torrington on 20 January 1751/2. The town clerk entered “Capt Thomas Curtis Died January 20th 1751/2” on the same page as the births of three of Zebulon’s children. His widow, Mary, outlived him: on 9 June 1754 she was admitted to the Torrington church with Zebulon and his wife Lydia, and the church’s list, as printed in the 1878 history, names “Zebulon Curtiss and his mother Mary, and his wife Lydia”.

Notes

The Wethersfield town book gives his birth as 24 November 1680; family compilations give 24 December.

The Farmington town record calls the younger Thomas, born in 1715, “his 6th child”. Only four older children are recorded, so one child born between Rebecca and Sibbel went unrecorded.

Two Thomas Curtises

Two boys named Thomas Curtis were born at Wethersfield ten years apart: one on 15 September 1670, to John and Lydia Curtis, and the other on 24 November 1680, to Joseph and Mercy. The elder became a mariner and sea captain at Wethersfield, married Rachel Morgan of Groton on 17 March 1714/15, made his will in 1734 and died about 1741; his will and the settlement of his estate name only his children by her. Several nineteenth-century genealogies give Mary Goodrich’s husband a second marriage to Rachel Morgan, but that marriage was the other Thomas’s. The Thomas of Farmington was raising a family there in the same years that Rachel’s children were born at Wethersfield, and Zebulon’s mother was named Mary and outlived her husband.

No record of either man’s adult life names his father. The 1904 history of Wethersfield makes the Thomas of Farmington the son of Joseph and Mercy, and the circumstances fit: his wife’s sister married Joseph’s son David, and the papers of Sergeant John Curtis’s estate, administered from 1715, set out what he had given each of his other children in his lifetime but nothing for a son Thomas. That is easier to explain if John’s Thomas was the mariner, still unmarried when his father died. An 1852 catalogue of the first settlers of Connecticut and an 1889 Goodrich genealogy make Mary’s husband the son of John and Lydia, but both also give him the Rachel Morgan marriage, merging the two men.