Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 03.djvu/91

 CURTIS

CURTIS

navy yard, 1862-65, and was graduated M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1866. He was resident physician at the Philadelphia hos- pital, 1866-67, visited the hospitals of Europe, 1867-68, and was assistant U.S. geologist under Professor Hayden, 1868-69. He settled in Phila- delphia as a physician and surgeon in 1869; was professor of geology and mineralogy in the Wag- ner free institute, 1871-78; professor of geology in George's institute, Philadelphia, 1873; assist- ant medical director of the Centennial exposition, 1876; chief of the medical dispensary of the hos- pital, University' of Penn,sylvania, 1872-82; assist- ant professor of clinical medicine and lecturer in the University of Pennsylvania from 187«7, and president of the medicine board, Philadelphia hospital, from 1891. He was elected a member of various medical and scientific organizations .and an officer in the national and international medical congresses. He received the degree of A.M. from Lafayette college in 1883. He was married, March 21, 1882, to Julia Robinson, daughter of Edwin Taylor of Hartford, Conn.

CURTIS, Alfred Allen, R.C. bi.shop, was born in Somerset county, Md., July 4, 1831. His primary studies were received in the scliools of his native county. In 1856 he was ordained a deacon in the Protestant Episcopal church and ■was assigned to St. John's parish, Worcester, Mass., and in 1859 he was elevated to the priest- hood. His resignation as a minister in the Prot- estant Episcopal churcli was offered and ac- cepted in December, 1870, and in the early part of 1871 he visited England and consulted with Bishop John Henry Newman, who received him into the Roman Catholic church, April 18, 1872. He returned to the United States and entered the seminary of St. Sulpice at Baltimore. He was ordained a priest by Archbishop Bayley, Dec. 18, 1874, and was made assistant at the Baltimore cathedral, also filling the position of private sec- retary to the archbishop. After the death of Archbishop Bayley in 1877 Father Curtis re- mained at the cathedral. In 1886 he succeeded the Rt. Rev. Thomas A. Becker, D.D., bishop of Wilmington, transferred to Savannah. He was consecrated bishop on Nov. 16, 1886, by Arch- bishop Gibbons, assisted by Bisliops Moore and Kain. He had in his diocese in 1896 between thirty and forty priests, two academies, two or- phan asylums, about a d^zen parochial schools, five houses of the Sisters of St. Francis and sev- eral missions for the colored, and a Catholic population of about 20,000. He resigned the bishopric of Wilmington, Jan. 23, 1896. receiving the titular see of Echinus, June 25, 1896. He was continued as bishop administrator of Wil- mington until the consecration of his succes.sor, the Rt. Rev. John Monaghan, and preached his

farewell sermon. May 2, 1897. In 1898 he was appointed by Cardinal Gibbons vicar-general of Baltimore.

CURTIS, Benjamin Robbins, jurist, was born in Watertown, Mass., Nov. 4, 1809; son of Capt. Benjamin and Lois (Robbins) Curtis; grandson of Dr. Benjamin and Elizabeth (Billings) Curtis, and a descendant in the sixth generation from William and Sarah Curtis, who came from Essex county, England, to Boston in 1832. He was a brother of George Ticknor Curtis. He was grad- uated at Harvard in 1829, admitted to the bar in 1832, and practised at Northfield, Mass., for a short time, when he removed to Boston where he acquired renown as a lawyer. He served two years in the Massachusetts legislature, and in 1851 President Fillmore appointed him a justice of the U.S. supreme court. The Dred Scott case came before the court while he was on the bench as one of the two dissenting justices and in his argument he upheld the right of congress to pro- hibit slavery and claimed that a person of African descent could be a citizen of the United States. He resigned in 1857 and resumed the practice of his profession in Boston, also practising in the U.S. supreme court. He was elected to the state legislature two tenns. In 1868 he was one of the council for the defence in the impeachment trial of President Johnson and he read the an- swer to the articles of impeachment, the argu- ment largely embodying his own conclusions. He also opened the defence in a sjieech occupying two days in its delivery, which attracted the attention of high legal authorities He was the Democratic candidate for U.S. senator in 1874 in opposition to Henry L. Dawes. His son, Benja- min Robbins, born in 1855, was graduated from Harvard in 1875; admitted to the bar in 1878; lecturer on jurisdiction and practice of U.S. courts in Boston University, 1882-91; judge of the municipal court of Boston, 1886-91; the author of Dotting s Bound the Circle (,1876); editor of The Junsdiction, Practice and Peculiar Jurisdic- tion of the Courts of the United States (1880), and of Vol. II. of Meyer's Federal Decisions jk Courts (1885), and died in Boston, Mass., Jan. 25, 1891. Among Judge Curtis's published works are; He- ports of Cases in the CiTCuit Courts of the United States (2 vols.. 1854); Decisions of Hie Supreme Court of the United States (22 volumes); and Di- gests of the Decisions oj the Supreme Court of the United States, from the origin of the court to 1854. His brother, George Ticknor, prepared Vol. I., and his son, Benjamin R, Vol II., of his Memoirs and Miscellaneous Writings. He died in Newport, R.I., Sept. 15, 1874.

CURTIS, Carlton B., representative, was born in Madison county, N,Y, Dec. 17, 1811 He was admitted to the bar and settled in Warren. Pa.