George Curtis

George Curtis (February 23, 1796 – January 9, 1856), was an American banker and politician who served as Speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives from 1837 to 1839.

Early life Curtis was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on February 23, 1796.

His paternal grandparents were Elizabeth ( Heywood) Curtis and John Curtis of Worcester, a direct descendant of soldier and politician Ephraim Curtis (himself a nephew of Ephraim Curtis, the prominent colonial soldier who fought in King Philip's War). In that organization, he served as chairman of various committees. He was a trustee of several public and private trusts in New York and served as a member of the finance committee and vice-president of the New England Society of New York for a number of years. he married Anna Shaw, a daughter of abolitionists Francis George Shaw (brother of Quincy Adams Shaw) and Sarah Blake (née Sturgis) Shaw (sister of merchant Russell Sturgis) and sister to Col. Robert Gould Shaw and Josephine Shaw Lowell, in 1856.

On April 3, 1834, he remarried to Julia Bowen Bridgham (1810–1874), the daughter of Elizabeth ( Paine) Bridgham and Samuel W. Bridgham, the first mayor of Providence, Rhode Island who had previously served as Attorney General of Rhode Island (succeeding James Burrill Jr.), and chancellor of Brown University. Before his death, they were the parents of: he married Martha ( McCook) Davis, widow of Dupont Alexander Davis and daughter of Maj. Daniel McCook, of Ohio. After her death in 1897, he married Netta Easter Blackwood, daughter of Henry James Blackwood, of Norwich, in 1902.

Curtis died in Jacksonville, Florida, where he had gone with his wife and youngest son to restore his health, on January 9, 1856. His body was returned to Providence where he was buried in the North Burial Ground there. and authors George De Clyver Curtis, and Natalie Curtis, a prominent ethnomusicologist (who married artist Paul Burlin).