Charles Curtis (storekeeper)
New Zealand politician
Charles Stuart Curtis (15 December 1850 – 4 April 1923) was a storekeeper and local politician in Taranaki, New Zealand, and played a leading role in the development of the town of Stratford.
Biography
Family background
Charles Stuart Curtis was born to George Curtis and Eliza Curtis (née Newsham) in Omata, Taranaki, on 15 December 1850. His parents and siblings had emigrated to New Zealand from London earlier that same year. Arriving at Port Nicholson, his father had walked overland from Wellington to New Plymouth, and made preparations for his family, who arrived there on 7 February 1850. They took up a farm in the new settlement of Omata, and George also became the senior partner of Curtis and Watt, a wholesale merchant and agent of Lloyd's in New Plymouth.
First Taranaki War
War broke out between settlers and Māori in 1860, and as a result Eliza and the children moved to New Plymouth. George remained at the Omata stockade, but after seeing his home burned to the ground, and to avoid the epidemics plaguing the crowded town of New Plymouth, the Curtis family evacuated to Nelson. They remained there until the hostilities ceased in 1861, then returned to their land at Omata.
Business
George Curtis became a prominent leader in commercial matters in the province of Taranaki, representing Omata on the Taranaki Provincial Council. Charles worked with his father in their Omata store, and quickly picked up the same business acumen which proved invaluable to his own commercial ventures in the new settlement of Stratford.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Curtis (storekeeper)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.