Boyhood Home of Jeremiah Curti

Born in Detroit to Irish immigrant parents, Curtin came to Milwaukee in 1837 to join his mother’s family the Furlongs and settle on a farm in Greenfield. In the 1840’s the Curtins moved into this typically Irish stone house described in Curtin’s <i>Memoirs</i>. After his father’s death Jeremiah persevered in his love for learning and languages and graduated from Harvard College in 1863. His command of Russian won him a position in the U.S. Legation in St. Petersburg in 1864, thus launching his forty-year world-wide career as linguist, translator (Sienkiewicz’s <i>Quo Vadis</i>), ethnologist, folklorist, and diplomat. He died and was buried at his wife’s Vermont home in Bristol.