Cyrus A. Curtis Biography
As published in the "Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and
Representative Men of Racine and Kenosha Counties, Wisconsin containing
Biographical Sketches of Business and Professional Men and Many of the Early
Settled Families", The J. H. Beers & Co., Chicago, 1906.
Transcribed by Marcie Pierce Colleary
Cyrus A. Curtis is an up-to-date farmer, cultivating the farm of which he has
had charge since his father¹s retirement. He was born Aug. 12, 1860, and most of
his boyhood was passed in the East, whither his father took him when he was five
years old. He was sent to a private school and then to the district schools, and
when about sixteen returned to Wisconsin. He then began to assist his father
about the farm, and gradually assumed the entire charge. He was married Jan. 1,
1885, to Miss Louisa Fenske, and one child was born to this union. Cora M., but
she lived only nine months. Mr. Curtis is a good Republican in his political
views, and has served the township as road commissioner. He is one of the
wide-awake, enterprising agriculturists of the section, and he and his aged
father both enjoy the respect of the entire community.
Henry and Minnie (Pofahl) Fenske, the parents of Mrs. Louisa F. Curtis, were
natives of Germany, where Mrs. Curtis also was born, in 1864. The family came to
America two years later, and locating in Wisconsin, the father for a time worked
out by the month, but later bought fifty-two acres in Paris Township. Improving
it, he spent the rest of his life there, dying in 1887, aged forty-eight, and
his wife followed him a little more than a year after, at the same age. They had
eight children, one of whom died in Germany in infancy, and one in America, age
fourteen. The others are: Louisa, Mrs. Curtis; Louis of Somers Station, Wis.;
Mary, Mrs. Fred Sax, residing in Delavan, Wis.; William, of Kenosha; Anna, Mrs.
John Batcher, of Kenosha; and Rosa, Mrs. Glen Heisert. Mr. Fenske served in the
German army for some time. His father died in Germany in 1848, but his mother,
Mrs. Caroline (Hegeman) Fenske, came to America in 1883, and lived in Kenosha
from that time until her death, in 1902, at the age of eighty-seven. She was the
mother of four sons and four daughters.