WILLIAM CURTIS

• Birth Notes
  •  was born 12 Nov 1592 in Nazing, Essex, England and was christened 12 Nov 1592 in Nazing, Essex, England

• Death Notes
  • He died 8 Dec 1672 in Roxbury, Suffolk, Massachusetts. 

• General Notes
  • William Curtis WILLIAM CURTIS 
    
    ORIGIN: Nazeing, Essex
    MIGRATION: 1632
    FIRST RESIDENCE: Roxbury
    OCCUPATION: Yeoman.
    CHURCH MEMBERSHIP: Admitted to Roxbury church as member #37: "William Curtis, he came to this land in the year 1632 & soon after joined to the church; he brought 4 children with him, Thomas, Mary, John, Phillip, & his eldest son William came the year before; he was a hopeful scholar, but God took him in the end of the year 1634" [ RChR 75].
    FREEMAN: 4 March 1632/3 [ MBCR 1:367].
    EDUCATION: Signed his deeds.
    OFFICES: Petit jury, 19 September 1637 [ MBCR 1:203].
    ESTATE: On 13 March 1638/9 the General Court gave William Curtis "leave to build upon his lot, his other dwelling being seated so inconveniently" [ MBCR 1:252].
    On 15 March 1626 [recte 1646], Hugh Prichard of Roxbury sold to William and Thomas Curtis seventeen acres in Roxbury, with the payment to be spread over seven years [ SLR 1:139]; in the acknowledgment 22 August 1651 it is noted "Tho: Curtis being dead." On 21 July 1647, William Curtis of Roxbury and Thomas his son mortgaged eleven acres of land in Roxbury to Thomas Dudley [ SLR 1:82].
    In the Roxbury land inventory, compiled in 1652 or 1653, William Curtis held four parcels of land: ten acres with house, barn and orchard; one acre of upland and meadow; three acres "which he had in way of exchange between him and Jeames Morgan and Robert Pepper"; and two acres and a rood of salt marsh bought of John Ruggles Jr. [ RBOP 33].
    In a testamentary deed dated 11 February 1669/70, William Curtis of Roxbury "for & in consideration of mine own and my wife's age & weakness & our inability by reason thereof to manage that small estate in our hands & our incapability to live without some able person to be a staff & guide to us in our age & all my children through the goodness of god being disposed into families of their own excepting my youngest son Isaac" for "fatherly affection" give to "my beloved son Isaac Curtis ... now living with me my whole estate now in my hands, ... my dwelling house barn and outhousing & all my lands orchards and yards, cattle and moveable goods, ... the several parcells of land in Roxbury, ten acres of land in Roxbury by Stony River ..., two acres of salt marsh in the Island in Roxbury ..., five acres of woodland near the great lots ..., eight acres in the woods in the middle division ...," on the consideration that Isaac Curtis shall provide for "me his said father William Curtis and his said mother Sarah Curtis during the time of our natural life or the longest liver of us both" all things necessary, reserving the right to sell any of the pieces for our maintenance and reserving half the fruit in the orchard. Isaac Curtis shall cause to be paid to "my beloved son John Curtis and to my beloved son-in-law Isaac Nowell" 40s. each, "the rest of my children they have already received their portion" [ SLR 8:116-18].
    BIRTH: Baptized Nazeing 12 November 1592, son of Thomas and Mary (Camp) Curtis [ Ackley-Bosworth 204].
    DEATH: Roxbury 9 December 1672 "aged 80" [ RChR 180].
    MARRIAGE: (1) St. Margaret Moses, London, 3 December 1615 Mary Rawlyns ("William Curtis of Nassinge in the County of Essex yeoman and Mary Rawlyns of Wormley were married the iijth of December with a license" 1615); died at or very soon after the birth of her son William.
    (2) Nazeing 6 August 1618 Sarah Eliot; she was baptized Widford, Essex, 13 January 1599/1600, daughter of Bennet and Lettice (Agar) Eliot [ Eliot Gen 3]; "Sarah Curtis, the wife of William Curtis" admitted to Roxbury church as member #38, immediately after her husband [ RChR 75]; died Roxbury 27 March 1672/3 "aged about 73" [ RChR 180].
    CHILDREN:
    With first wife 
    
    i WILLIAM, bp. Nazeing 21 June 1618; d. Roxbury late 1634 ("He was a hopeful scholar, but God took him in the end of the year 1634" [ RChR 75]). 
    
    With second wife
    ii THOMAS, bp. Nazeing 12 March 1619/20; d. soon. 
    
    iii THOMAS, bp. Nazeing 19 January 1622/3; d. Roxbury 26 June 1650 ("Thomas Curtis, the son of William Curtis, died of a long & tedious consumption") [ RChR 174]; presumably unmarried. 
    
    iv ELIZABETH, bp. Nazeing 13 February 1624/5; bur. there 16 January 1627/8. 
    
    v SARAH, bp. Nazeing 5 August 1627; as there is no burial for a Sarah in Nazeing, and no room in the sequence of births for another child, this daughter is very likely the same as the Mary named by Eliot at the admission of her father to Roxbury church; no further record. 
    
    vi JOHN, bp. Nazeing 17 July 1629; m. (1) Roxbury 26 December 1661 Rebecca Wheeler; m. (2) after 1675 and before 1682 Dorcas Peake, daughter of CHRISTOPHER PEAKE [ Parker-Ruggles 426, 465-66, citing SLR 16:342; NEHGR 51:166]. 
    
    vii PHILIP, bp. Nazeing 25 March 1632; m. Roxbury 20 October 1658 Obedience Holland [see SCC 811]. She m. (2) Roxbury 11 February 1677/8 Benjamin Gamlin. 
    
    viii HANNAH, b. say 1634; m. Roxbury 25 August 1651 William Gary [ RVR MS 129]. 
    
    ix ELIZABETH, b. say 1637; m. Roxbury 14 December 1659 Isaac Newell. 
    
    x ISAAC, b. Roxbury 22 July 1641 [ RVR MS 3]; m. Roxbury 10 May 1670 Hannah Polly. 
    
    ASSOCIATIONS: William's uncle John Curtis came to Roxbury by 1639, and then moved on to Wethersfield [ Ackley-Bosworth 204-05]. The second wife of William Curtis was sister of the Reverend JOHN ELIOT [ Eliot Gen 3].
    COMMENTS: The child William has presented a problem to those who have treated the Curtis family in the past. He clearly existed, for Eliot tells us about his arrival a year before his father, and his death not long after. But the date of marriage of the immigrant to Sarah Eliot, the baptism of son Thomas nineteen months later, and the regular arrival of children after that leave no place for William. The discovery of a marriage in London in 1615 for a William Curtis of "Nassinge" provides him with a wife early enough to be the mother of the William baptized at Nazeing in 1618. Unfortunately, the Nazeing parish registers for these years do not name either of the parents of the child, so there remains a possibility that this William belongs in another family. There is, however, no baptism for another William anywhere near the right time, and there is no evidence for a second adult William ;[3 2723m Curtis of Nazeing who could have made the London marriage, and so the solution above is adopted.
    On 5 December 1637 "William Curtis, of Roxberry," agreed to pay to Richard Browne of Watertown, "in the behalf of John Woolcot," £5 10s., inasmuch as Curtis owed that amount to "John Jesop, now out of this jurisdiction," and Jesop owed that much to Woolcot [ MBCR 1:218].
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    William1Curtis (baptized Nov. 12 1592 in Nazeing, Essex, England) the son of Thomas Curtis (bapt.25 aug 1560 in Nazeing, Essex, England) and Mary Camp. William1 married 1st Mary Rawlyns 3 Dec 1615 in London, England (The Great Migration Begins, by Robert Charles Anderson) and had one son William2 Curtis. William2 came to America a year before his father. "He was a hopeful scholar, but God took him in the end of the year 1634" (Roxbury, Mass. church records).
    
    
    William1 married 2nd Sarah Eliot, the sister of the "Rev. John Eliot" aka "Apostle to the Indians". They married 6 Aug 1618 in Nazeing, England. On 22 Jun 1632 William1 with his wife, Sarah and four children (Thomas, Mary, John & Phillip) sailed from London on the ship "Lyon" and arrived at Boston, Massachusetts on Sunday, September 16, 1632.
    
    
    In 1644 the Rev. John Eliot remarks in his "Records of the First church of Roxbury":
    
    "Soon after that one William Curtis of Roxbury was cast off from a cart of loggs unto the ground with such violence, yet his head & one side of his face were bruised, blood gushed out of his ears, his braine was shaken, he senseless divers days, yet by degres thro' God's mercy he recovered his senses , yet his cheeke drawne awry & p'alitik, but in a quarter of a year, he was pretty well recovered, to the wonder of all men." (A Genealogy of the descendants of William Curtis of Roxbury, Mass. by Harold E. Curtis.)
    William1 died in Roxbury on 9 Dec 1672 at the age of 80.