James Freeman Curtis

James Freeman Curtis (August 16, 1878 – November 23, 1952) was an American lawyer who served Assistant Secretary of the Treasury from 1909 until 1914.

Early life Curtis was born on August 16, 1878, in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, and was named for his paternal uncle, James F. Curtis. He was a son of Brig.-Gen. Greely Stevenson Curtis (1830–1897) and Harriot Sumner ( Appleton) Curtis (1841–1923). Among his siblings were Harriot Curtis, a prominent amateur golfer and skier.

He attended Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1899 and where he was an Intercollegiate golf champion. He also attended Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1903.

From 1914 to 1919, he served as counsel and deputy governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. After which he became a partner in the New York law firm of Curtis, Belknap & Webb. who married George Herbert Bostwick, a son of Albert Carlton Bostwick, in 1933. James Freeman Curtis (1915–1945), who married Barbara Hope Gatins (1918–2017), a daughter of Benjamin Keiley Gatins, in 1938; he died in a plane crash. Frazier Curtis (1918–1942), a Harvard graduate who was killed in a plane accident. Pauline Curtis (1922–2001), who married Schuyler Hollingsworth.

Laura and James divorced in Paris in April 1924, however, thirteen months later they remarried in Washington, D.C. They divorced again in January 1938, after which she married John Messick Gross, a vice president of Bethlehem Steel, in July 1938. In September 1938, he married Eleanor ( Munroe) Green (1884–1967), daughter of the Henry Smith Munroe, Dean of the Columbia University School of Mines. Eleanor was the former wife of Walton Atwater Green, former prohibition investigator, stock broker and publisher from Boston.

He was a member of the Tavern Club, Harvard Club, Country Club, Tennis and Racquet Club of Boston, the Harvard Club of New York and the Metropolitan Club in Washington.