Robert Henry McCurdy

Robert Henry McCurdy (April 14, 1800 – April 5, 1880) was an American businessman and political candidate. He amassed great wealth with partner Herman D. Aldrich as the co-founder of McCurdy and Aldrich, a commission firm which traded Southern cotton and other dry goods prior to the Panic of 1857. He lost his bid for Congress as a Whig in the late 1850s, and served as Commissary-General for the State of New York during the American Civil War.

Early life Robert Henry McCurdy was born in 1800 in Lyme, Connecticut. He was the son of Ursula Wolcott (née Griswold) McCurdy and Richard McCurdy, a Yale graduate who served in the Connecticut House of Representatives.

He was of Scotch Irish descent on his paternal side; as early as 1503, King James VI leased the vast majority of the Isle of Bute to the MacKurerdy family (later McCurdy). His paternal grandfather, John McCurdy, emigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1745 prior to the Declaration of Independence. Shortly after, he was sent for work for Lockwood in Petersburg, Virginia, where he purchased cotton on commission. It later became known as McCurdy, Aldrich and Spencer.

In 1857, McCurdy ran for the 35th United States Congress as a Whig, but he lost to Democratic politician John Cochrane. After her death, he married Anna Hubbard Gillette (1841–1927). Richard Aldrich McCurdy (1835–1916), who married Sarah Ellen Little (b. 1835), the daughter of publisher Charles Coffin Little. Sarah Lord McCurdy (1842–1914), who married Dr. Elias Joseph Marsh (1838–1908), Roberta Wolcott McCurdy (1845–1920), who married Charles Mercer Marsh, Esq. (1841–1902),

McCurdy died on April 5, 1880. His funeral was held as a joint ceremony with Herman D. Aldrich, who died on the same day, at the Calvary Church. His sermon was given by George L. Prentiss, a Presbyterian pastor of the Union Theological Seminary. He was buried at the Green-Wood Cemetery next to Aldrich. and Gertrude Lee McCurdy (d. 1930), who married sportsman and philanthropist Louis A. Thebaud (1859–1939).