Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/883

Rh Mr. Curtis is lieutenant-commander of R. E. Lee camp, Confederate Veterans. He was married January 27, 1872, to Margaret M., daughter of Fayette Sinclair, a surviving veteran of the Confederacy. Mrs. Curtis died in March, 1895, leaving eight children.

Lieutenant Thomas G. H. Curtis, a gallant Confederate soldier from Warwick county, Va., who lost his life near the close of the war, entered the service of Virginia and the Confederacy early in the year 1861, as a sergeant of the Warwick Beauregards, subsequently assigned to the Thirty-second regiment, Virginia infantry, as Company H. With this command he served throughout the war, winning promotion to the rank of lieutenant, and honorably participating in many engagements, including the famous battles of Seven Pines, Malvern Hill, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. He was with Lee's army at Richmond and Petersburg and on the retreat in April, 1865, was killed by the explosion of a shell from the enemy's guns, two or three days before the surrender at Appomattox. Only a few weeks before this sad event he had been married. A brother of the foregoing, Humphrey H. Curtis, served as captain of the same company of the Thirty-second regiment, for a year and a half, after which, being a physician by profession, he was detailed for professional work in Caswell county, N. C. He died in 1881. Another brother, William H. Curtis, though afflicted with feeble health, which prevented active duty on the field, served in the hospital department and as a member of the reserves at Richmond during the latter part of the war, and now resides in James City county. Two first cousins of these brothers, William C. and Samuel Minor, were members o£ the same company and regiment until they were captured and imprisoned at Point Lookout. Samuel died soon after the close of the war from the effects of his confinement and his brother is now a resident of Warwick county, Va. The three Curtis brothers, whose military services have been briefly mentioned, were the sons of Daniel Prentiss Curtis, a farmer of Warwick county, who was born in 1803, and died in 1857. By his marriage to Elizabeth Reed Harwood, daughter of Humphreys Harwood, a planter, he had seventeen children, of whom but two survive, William H. Curtis, the oldest, and James M. Curtis, the youngest, a prominent business man of Newport News, and for twenty-four years treasurer of his county. The latter was born in Warwick county, December 20, 1850. During the war he was a refugee with his mother and the other children in North Carolina, in consequence of which he was deprived in his youth of those educational advantages in schools and colleges, so abundant in times of peace. But largely by his personal efforts he abundantly fitted himself to worthily fill a leading place in social, financial and business life. With his mother until he was of age, and subsequently for twenty years on his own account, he was industriously occupied as a farmer on the banks of the Warwick and James rivers. Meanwhile, from the age of twenty-one years, he had occupied official positions, first as a justice of the peace and later as county supervisor, and in 1875 he was elected to the office of county treasurer. He was at that time the youngest county treasurer in the State, but his duties were performed with such ability and courtesy that he has since then been continuously re-elected, and in May, 1896, he was also elected treasurer of the