Newton Martin Curtis
Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient
Newton Martin Curtis (May 21, 1835 – January 8, 1910) was a Union officer during the American Civil War and a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York.
Early life
Curtis was born in De Peyster, New York. Upon graduating from the Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary, Curtis became a teacher, lawyer, and postmaster of De Peyster. In the year prior to the Civil War, he was working as a farmer.
Curtis stood an impressive 6' 7" tall and weighed 225 pounds. His enormous size for the time period prompted even Abraham Lincoln to quip, "Mr. Curtis, how do you know when your feet are cold?" His stature became an issue of concern to his family when the Civil War began, as they felt he would surely be an easy target for enemy bullets.
Civil War
On May 15, 1861, Curtis volunteered in the Union Army as a captain in Company G of the 16th New York Infantry. He fought in the Peninsula Campaign and was wounded in a minor engagement at West Point, Virginia. On October 23, 1862, he transferred to the 142nd New York Volunteer Infantry, serving as lieutenant colonel until his promotion to colonel on January 21, 1865.
The public source identifies “Newton Martin Curtis” as union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Newton, Martin and Curtis.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q13219094. VIAF identifies the subject as 41397423. The Library of Congress control number is no90002717. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1835, 1910, 1861 and 1862.
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This entry incorporates text from “Newton Martin Curtis” 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.