♂Truman Curtis

Truman Curtis (dates given as 4 March 1804 – 13 September 1885) was a farmer who lived in Ohio and then in Michigan, where he was still farming at Birch Run at the age of 76. He was the second great-grand-uncle of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the brother of Waterman Curtis (1793–1859), Roger’s second great-grandfather. The 1860 census and Melissa’s 1911 death record show that he had children before his marriage of 1849.

Early life

Truman was the son of Jeremiah Curtis (1770–1810) and Mary Morton (1768–1816), and the fourth of the five children the records name. His parents had married at Chesterfield, Massachusetts, in 1790, and a published history of Chesterfield families states that all the children of John Curtis, Truman’s grandfather, moved to North Norwich, New York, after 1800. His birth there is given as 1804, which fits that move. His brother Junia died in 1809, his father was last recorded living at Norwich in 1810, and his mother died at Norwich on 9 January 1816.

Two families

The first marriage is given as one to Sophronia Gillett about 1826 at Cortland, New York, with three children: Lawren (born 1832), Sophia (1840) and Melissa (1845). No record documents the marriage or the wife’s name. That he had a family before 1849 is nonetheless plain. The 1860 census lists a Melissa and a James in his household at fifteen and twelve, and Melissa’s death record of 1911 names Truman Curtis as her father and gives her mother as unknown.

An Ohio marriage index gives his marriage to Barbara Ferguson (1825–1904) on 28 March 1849 in Geauga County. Their son George was born in 1852 at Willoughby, Lake County, and four more children followed: Charles, Albert, Ella and John. Later records name the pair as their parents: Albert’s marriage record of 1890 gives “Barbara Ferguson, Truman Curtis”, and George’s death certificate of 1935 does the same.

Michigan

The family left Ohio in the late 1850s. Charles was born in Ohio, Albert in Michigan, and the 1860 census finds the household in Arbela Township, Tuscola County. By 1870 Truman was farming in Birch Run Township, Saginaw County, with Barbara and six children at home. On 22 June 1880 the census taker found him there at 76, still a farmer, with Barbara and five of their children.

His death is given as 13 September 1885 at Birch Run, at the age of 81. On the dates given for him, Barbara outlived him by nearly twenty years.

Notes

Dates and places

No record gives the birth date of 4 March 1804 or the place North Norwich, nor the death date and place. The 1880 census supports a birth about 1804 in New York, and it places him at Birch Run.

His parents’ birthplaces

In 1880 Truman gave Massachusetts as the birthplace of both his parents. Jeremiah Curtis was baptized at Torrington, Connecticut, though the family was in Massachusetts by 1790. Melissa’s death record of 1911 gives her father’s birthplace as Pennsylvania. His children in 1880 gave New York for their father.

The first family

Barbara Ferguson was born in Ohio in 1825. Lawren, born in 1832, would have been born when she was seven, which is impossible; Sophia, born in 1840, when she was fifteen, which is near-impossible; and Melissa, born in 1845, when she was about twenty and four years before her marriage to Truman. The 1860 listing of Melissa and James, born in Ohio before 1849, points the same way. James and Josephine, who appear in the households of both 1860 and 1870, are not among the children given for him. A Truman Curtis born 24 February 1801 and dead 2 February 1876 at Knoxville, with a wife Lucinda, is kept apart as a different man.