Ancestors

Martha Curtis

Martha Curtis was born on 10 July 1804. Where is not settled. Her Iowa death register of 1880, as her memorial transcribes it, gives Scotland. The census of 1850 gives New York, and her eldest known daughter was born in New York in 1822. Her first husband was a man named Porter. Two daughters of that marriage are known: Elizabeth, born in New York in 1822, who married William Rockwell in 1847, and Amanda, born in Ohio on 2 February 1823, who married Chauncey Norris Aldrich in 1847 and died on 12 December 1896. The births put the family in New York and then Ohio in the early 1820s.

By 1838 she was a widow. On 20 May 1838 she married Imley Rockwell at Medina, Ohio. An extract of the Ohio record reads: "IMLEY ROCKWELL, Spouse: MARTHA CURTIS, Marriage: 20 MAY 1838, Medina, Ohio". A widow usually married under her late husband's surname, so Curtis may be the name of a second husband rather than her maiden name. Imley had been married before too, to Polly Dickson at Independence, Cuyahoga County, in 1820.

In August 1850 she was forty-six and living at Hinckley, Medina County, Ohio, in Imley Rockwell's household. With them were Elizabeth, twenty-eight, very probably her daughter Elizabeth Porter; William, twenty-two, very probably Elizabeth's husband William Rockwell; their son Henry, two; Hiram C., fifteen; and Jane, six. Jane is very probably her daughter Cynthia Jane Rockwell. William and Hiram were born in Ohio about 1828 and 1835, before Martha married Imley, and are probably his sons by Polly Dickson. Imley was a farmer of fifty-seven, born in Connecticut, with land worth $1,200.

Her daughter Cynthia Jane Rockwell was born in Ohio on 6 May 1844. Cynthia married Harvey Warner of Sextonville, Wisconsin, on 2 November 1865, as his second wife, bore a daughter, Jennie Melinda, in July 1866, and died on 14 May 1868, aged twenty-four. Martha's tie to Cynthia rests on a memorial and on the 1850 household. Imley Rockwell is very probably Cynthia's father, since he had been married to Martha for six years when she was born, but no record names him so.

Martha moved to Iowa about 1865 and died at Delhi, in Delaware County, on 23 August 1880. The register entry reads: "Martha Rockwell ... Age 76y 1m 13d ... Widow ... Where Born Scotland ... resident of Iowa 15 years". She is buried in Evergreen Cemetery at Delhi.

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Cite: Heirology, "Martha Curtis (1804-1880)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/martha-curtis-1804-1880-23d46a.