CURTIX
CURTIN
■thought in liokling 1.1,000 extra vohinteers at
Harrisburg was ai)preciated by the government
and the men were soon put in the field. The
Pennsylvania reserves were known by the whole
army and made a record for bravery as they did
for patriotism. This vigorous ix)licy of the
governor was kept up throughout the war and 270
regiments besides detached companies, an army
of 387,284 men, were credited to the single state
of Pennsylvania. Official agents of the state
were sent to the field to look after the sick and
wounded and through the efforts of the governor
no body of a soldier known to have belonged to
Pennsylvania was buried outside the state. A
system for the care and education of the orphans
and the children of the wounded, was organized,
the state becoming their guardian and support-
ing them until they could support themselves.
At the end to his second term, Governor Curtin
retired from public life, declining a second
time the proffer of a first-class foreign mission.
In 18G9 President Grant appointed him U.S.
minister to Russia and in the Republican na-
tional conventions of 1868 and 1872 he was promi-
nently before both conventions as a suitable
candidate for the vice-presidency. Upon his
return from Russia in 1872 he supported Horace
Greeley for the presidency and remained in the
Democratic party. He served as a representa-
tive in the 47th, 4'8th and 49th congresses, 1881-87.
He was married to Katharine, daughter of Dr.
William J. Wilson of Centre county. Pa. He
died at Bellefonte Pa., Oct 7, 1894.
CURTIN, Jeremiah, philologist and author, was Ixjrn in Milwaukee, Wis., Sept. 6, 1838; .son of David and Ellen (Furlong) Curtin, and grand- son of Jeremiah Curtin He was graduated from Harvard in 1863, where he had shown rare facility as a linguist. He under- stood all the modern European languages, was thorough in his knowledge of Latin and Greek, and soon .'i, made good progress ,/ in HeVjrew, Sanskrit /'/ // S ^^^ Persian. Having / a slight knowledge of
^ I Russian, he took ad-
-^ CPuV^i«cA vantage of the visit of Admiral Lis.sof- sky's fleet to America in 1864 to become ac- quainted with the atlmiral and officers, and soon sjKjke with them in their native tongue. In October, 1864. at the instance of James Ru.ssell Lowell, George William Curtis and Senator Fos- ter of Connecticut Secretary Seward appointed
him .secretary of the U.S. legation at St. Peters-
burg, anil he remained in that position until 1869,
taking advantage of his opiwrtunitj- to study
Polish and .some other Slav languages, as well as
the languages of Central Asia. He went to
Prague in 1869, to be present at the 500th anni-
versary of the birth of John Huss, and he de-
livered in Bohemian the oration of the day.
During his tour he ma.stered the languages of the
southern Slavs, thus completing the linguistic
Slav circle. In 1877, after one year in London,
spent mainlj^ at the British mu.seum, during
wliich time he read the Hebrew Old Testament
through twice and the Koran once in Arabic, he
returned to America and devoted himself to the
study of the languages of the American Indians.
From 1883 he was connected with the Bureau of
Ethnology, Smithsonian institution, as assi.stant
ethnologist, Major Powell, director of the bureau,
being ethnologist, till 1891 actively, and from
1891 actively only as occasion required. Between
1883 and 1891 he collected the vocabularies of
sixteen Indian languages, of which eight were
on the Pacific coast, and spent much time in in-
vestigation in California and Central America.
He is the author of Myths and Folklore of Ireland
(1890); Myths and Folk Tales of the liitssians, West-
ern Slavs and Magyars (1890); Myths and Hero
Tales of Ireland (1894); Fairy Tales of Ireland. He
translated from the Polish the following books
by Sienkiewicz: With Fire and Sicord (1890); The
Delurje (2 vols., 1891); Fan Michael (1893); Children
of the Soil (1895); Quo Vadis (1896); Hania (1897);
Sielanka, a Forest Picture, and Other Stories (1898);
The Knights of the Cross (1898); and from the
Russian: Tales of Three Centuries, by Michael
Zagoskin (1891); Prince Serebryani, by Alexis
Tolstoi (1892); Creation Myths of Primitive Amer-
ica in Pelation to the Beligious History and Mental
Development of Mankind (1899). In 1899 he had
several works well under way, including Russia
and Poland in Tfieir Historical Relations to America,
Great Britain and Russia; and a number of vol-
umes on American mythology and linguistics.
CURTIN, Roland Gideon, physician, was born in Bellefonte, Pu., Oct. 29, 1839; son of Dr. Coii- stans and Mary Anne (Kinne) Curtin. His father was graduated from Surgeons' hall, Dublin, Ire- land; immigrated to America in 1807; settled in Bellefonte in 1809, and practised as a physician and surgeon until his death in April, 1842. His mother was a lineal descendant from Gen. Thomas Welles of Connecticut, and granddaugh- ter of Aaron Kinne, chaplain of Fort Griswold. when the British under Arnold massacred Colonel Ledyard and his command, Sept. 6, 1781. Roland was graduated from the .scientific department of Williston seminary, Easthampton, Mass., in 1859, was U.S. naval storekeeper in the Philadelphia
