Excerpt from Record of the Descendants of Philo Curtis, Rutland, Vermont

The fourth hope with which this Record has been compiled is that through it we can all enter into a new social circle, almost world-wide, and based on the real element of blood relationship. Blood is thicker than water, expresses a real moral and social fact. We will be found to have much in common, and a certain fund of common traditions and ideals, thoroughly sound and wholesome in the main. It will do us all good to get better acquainted one with the other. Considerable letter writing to distant, hall-forgotten relatives, and some visits, should result from this record. We might be able at some time to unite in the accomplishment of some worthy task for the honor of our name. At any rate, to the writer, who has spent many years in a foreign land the sense of having a lot of folks is a great comfort, and knowledge of them a great satisfaction.

A few words of generalization on the Curtis characteristics. There is a strong Strain of pioneer blood, well illustrated by the successive locations in Vermont, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Panama, New Mexico and now in considerable numbers along the Pacific Coast. There seem to be few soldiers or sailors recorded, however. This pioneer strain, rather than a lack of taste and ability, may account for the small number who before 1900 secured higher education. There seems to be a generous share of musical ability, probably far more than gets cultivated. The family as a whole would rank with ordinary Americans in having enough to eat and wear with large bank accounts scarce! As to occupations, farmers pre dominate. There is no marked longevity. AS the record stands, only three can Show eighty years and above, - the three sons of Henry Spring Curtis, (no.4) who himself died young. His wife, Delia Hall Curtis lived to be ninety-six. Only sixteen others have passed the age of sixty. But in the matter of large families the record is strong. The average family is practi cally three children. The banner family (no. Has thirteen children. Twelve families have seven or more; thirty-eight families have three to six forty-two families have one or two, (considered eugenically unsound) and there are twenty-three childless families.

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