Curtis

The Curtis family is well documented in the website maintained by Mike Matthews but that website concentrates on family links whilst this website is more concerned with how members of that family affect the history of Chewton Mendip and the surrounding villages. The Curtis family were a middle ranking family who never achieved the social or financial levels  achieved by the Hippisley family but appear consistently in the records as reasonably wealthy farmers and tradesmen.

The first record for members of the Curtis family is dated 1591 when the Litton register records that Mary, the daughter of John Curtis was baptised in Litton.

John Curtis, gent, died 11th November 1681. He was married to Elizabeth who died 9th April 1706. They were both commemorated on a memorial in the south isle of Chewton Mendip Church.

Abigail, wife of John Curtis, gent, died 31st January,1705. John Curtis, Gent, died 1stJanuary 1737 aged 58. Edmund Rack’s description suggests that the second reference was linked to a memorial to John Savage who died in 1673.

Henry born 1845 son of Thomas and Mary.

Henry Curtis of The Antelope Hotel, Pool in Dorset, hotel keeper and commercial traveller, took out a mortgage  on the old Methodist chapel on Chew Hill on 17th May 1876. He borrowd the money from Henry Newmen Cooper, trading as Wyld and Co, of Bristol Bridge in Bristol. The previous owner was John Middle.