♂Thomas Curtis

Thomas Curtis (about 1739 – 1776) was a Connecticut man of Norfolk who turned out for the Lexington Alarm^W of April 1775 and is given as having died the next year at Stillwater, New York. He was the fourth great-grand-uncle of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the brother of John Curtis (1748–1790), Roger’s fourth great-grandfather.

Early life and service

Thomas was the second of the six children 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. Thomas’s birth is given at Farmington in about 1739, but no record documents it.

By 1775 he was living at Norfolk, in the hills of northwestern Connecticut. When word of the fighting at Lexington reached the colony that April, Connecticut militia companies marched toward Massachusetts, and Norfolk’s list in the printed Record of Service of Connecticut Men includes “Thomas Curtiss”, who served five days in Captain Timothy Gaylord’s company. A Sons of the American Revolution patriot index adds a second term in 1776, as a corporal in Captain Titus Watson’s company of Colonel Charles Burrall’s regiment, and lists him as having died in service.

Family and death

His death is given as 18 August 1776 at Stillwater, Saratoga County, New York, and the same patriot index gives the same date and place; no record documents it. The index also gives him a wife, Martha Cowles, and three children, Medad, Cyrus and Mary.

His father’s will, made on 30 June 1790, calls him “my late Son Thomas Curtis, late of Norfolk deceased” and leaves his interest in the saw mill and grist mill at Norfolk to Thomas’s heirs, “three Sons & two Daughters”.

Notes

Birth

The patriot index gives his birth as 7 January 1740 at Norfolk. The birth is given as about 1739 at Farmington, and neither is documented by a record.

Children

The will counts five grandchildren by Thomas, the index names three.