“A gentleman who was addressed by the name of Curtis”

I’ve been analyzing the traditions among Obadiah Curtis’s descendants that he participated in the Boston Tea Party and that he and his wife Martha provided hard cash for Benedict Arnold’s trek to Québec.

The 1869 Curtis family history immediately followed its sentence about financing Arnold’s expedition with this one:

Mr. Curtis became so obnoxious to the British authorities, that he was obliged to remove with his family to Providence, where he remained till after the evacuation of Boston.

Readers might well infer a cause-and-effect relationship between the two sentences—i.e., that the Curtises’ donation for Arnold’s expedition (launched in September 1775) led to their leaving Boston for Rhode Island.

That book then went on to quote (imperfectly) from the memoirs of Ebenezer Fox (shown above), which were first published in 1838. But the family chronicler turned a blind eye to an important detail of that book.

Fox described himself as a boy running away from Roxbury to Rhode Island starting on the night of 18–19 Apr 1775. When he got to Providence, he spotted Obadiah Curtis:

In the course of my perambulations I went into the market-house, and while there I saw a gentleman who was addressed by the name of Curtis. He was habited according to the fashion of gentlemen of those days; a three-cornered hat, a club wig, a long coat of ample dimensions that appeared to have been made with reference to future growth; breeches with large buckles, and shoes fastened in the same manner, completed his dress.

His face appeared familiar to me, and, feeling some interest in him, I was induced to make inquiries respecting him, and found that his christian name was Obadiah; and that he had lately removed from Boston to Providence. With this gentleman an aunt of mine, a sister of my mother, had lived in Boston, and I thought it probable that she might have removed to Providence with his family.

The timing of Fox’s story means Curtis must have been settled in Rhode Island before the war broke out, and thus well before Arnold proposed his mission to Canada.

The Curtises may indeed have felt unsafe after British troops arrived in Boston in May 1774. If Curtis was really involved in the Tea Party, he might have sought a safer home in Rhode Island, as John Crane and Ebenezer Stevens reportedly did. Or Obadiah and Martha Curtis may have just seen better business opportunities in a port that Parliament hadn’t closed.

Still, the credibility of the family history would be stronger if the author hadn’t overlooked the implications of the very evidence he quoted.

TOMORROW: The Curtis family tea.

“Mr. and Mrs. Curtis loaned their specie to the Colony”

Continuing my analysis of what an 1869 family history said about Obadiah Curtis (1724–1811), I reach the statement:

When the expedition against Canada was fitted out under Arnold, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis loaned their specie to the Colony, and took their pay in Continental paper.

That sentence appears to be the ultimate basis for this statement on the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum website:

He was also a personal aid to General Arnold and assisted him on his expedition to Canada.

Readers might reasonably interpret those words to mean Obadiah Curtis was an aide de camp to Benedict Arnold and accompanied him across Maine to Québec. And that would be mistaken.

Arnold was a colonel, not a general, during his 1775 expedition to Canada. He therefore didn’t have the budget for aides. The muster rolls listing all the men on that mission, published by Stephen Darley in Voices from a Wilderness Expedition, don’t include Obadiah Curtis.

That’s because Curtis spent the siege in Rhode Island, not in the Continental Army. The Curtis family claimed that their ancestors aided Arnold with money, not that Obadiah was a military aid(e) or was “on his expedition to Canada.”

But is it true that, “When the expedition against Canada was fitted out under Arnold,” Obadiah and Martha Curtis loaned specie to the colony of Massachusetts? Arnold’s expedition was funded by Gen. George Washington as commander-in-chief from Continental funds. Though specie was always in short supply in the British colonies, there was no special collection for the Canada mission, and a couple living in Providence would be an odd source to tap.

We do know that Obadiah Curtis loaned money to the state of Massachusetts sometime between 1777 and 1779. He is listed (along with hundreds of other people) in an 1899 publication of the Massachusetts D.A.R. titled Honor Roll of Massachusetts Patriots Heretofore Unknown. That loan was supposed to pay 6% interest, though of course inflation of paper currency and the need for cash caused problems for the lenders.

I’m guessing that the Curtises’ decision to risk some of their savings on risky war bonds was remembered within the family, and Arnold’s celebrated mission got attached later.

It’s notable that the family tradition credited both Obadiah and Martha Curtis with this financial action, though officially the loan came from him. Both Curtises died in 1811, her a few months earlier, so that recollection was not the result of descendants hearing stories from the widow. Martha came from a wealthy Framingham family and ran a store in the South End, so she was probably involved in, if not the manager of, the family finances.

TOMORROW: Obadiah Curtis in Rhode Island.