Curran and Mulford Family Papers, 1770-1966

Extent:

11 Linear Feet

Scope and content:

Description of the Papers

The Curran Family Papers subseries is largely composed of family photographs, but also holds Mary Curran's bible (with family history annotations) and material related to the American Civil War through Henry Hastings Curran's papers.

The John Elliott Curran Papers subseries contains some personal correspondence, but also holds a number of case files from his brief law career. His Personal Papers hold some school books and drawings, in addition to material he acquired while touring Europe after his college graduation (1870): a collection of French prints and Italian drawings, and a deluxe photograph album containing scenes of Rome. The subseries closes with photographs of Curran and the Yale College campus, and a group of his literary writings, including two copies of his published novel, and a number of his manuscripts. In the latter is his memoir of traveling to the Wilderness battlefield in Virginia to try to find the body of his brother Henry. Curran's Yale class photograph album is at Manuscripts and Archives in Sterling Memorial Library.

The Eliza (Lilla) Mulford Curran Papers subseries contains correspondence, personal papers, photographs, and writings. There are over one hundred letters that she received from her parents while she was away at boarding school, as well as quantities of letters received from her sisters, cousins, aunts, and friends, writing from their homes and summer resorts in the American northeast; also there are several folders of courtship letters from her husband-to-be, some of which comment on Eliza's talent as a writer. Curran was photographed often during her lifetime, so the subseries holds a wide selection of images of her (and her friends and home in Englewood) in a variety of formats. Writings holds manuscripts and typescripts of short stories and talks on music history, and a memoir titled "Washington, 1863-1864," which recounts her childhood experiences living in that city and meeting Abraham Lincoln at the White House. Tearsheets primarily contains short stories published in the religious weeklies Churchman, Christian Union, and Young Christian Soldier. Curran was also a postcard collector, and her subseries holds an album and a box of loose cards collected during her European and American travels.

The Henry H. Curran Papers subseries holds personal and professional correspondence, photographs, military records, and a wide selection of Curran's published and unpublished essays; the material is arranged under five headings: Correspondence, Personal Papers, Photographs, Professional Papers, and Writings. Half of the papers document Curran's political career, civic engagements, and private passions, including New York City and his Greenwich Village neighborhood. They are filed in chronological order by the elected and appointed positions he held. Writings include the columns Curran wrote for the New York Times and the Villager, as well as his writings on immigration issues and short stories for popular magazines between 1923 and 1950.

The Mulford Family Papers subseries primarily contains material related to James H. Mulford and his ancestors, siblings, second wife, and children (with the exception of his daughter Eliza (Lilla) Mulford Curran, whose papers are listed separately in the third subseries). It includes some business and financial papers and correspondence documenting James H. Mulford's career as a cotton buyer, with many portrait photographs of the family. Also of interest in the subseries are two examples of engraved plates for printing family members' visiting cards (still with their advertising wrappers), and James H. Mulford's single literary piece: a meditation on the death of his youngest brother George, from consumption in 1843.

Arrangement:

Series XI is organized into five subseries: Curran Family Papers, John Elliott Curran Papers, Eliza Mulford Curran Papers, Henry H. Curran Papers, and Mulford Family Papers.

Biographical History:

Edward Curran (1803–1856)

Edward Curran was an American-born leather goods merchant in Utica, New York, the seventh of ten children of Henry Curran, a tanner who had emigrated from Ireland to central New York State around 1800. Edward was married twice, first to Amanda Bartlett (1807-1837), with whom he had five children: Celia, Charles, Amanda, Edward, and Horatio. With his second wife Mary Jane Langford (1815-1893) he also had five: George, Henry, Philip, Mary (Molly), and John Elliott. Two Curran siblings, Henry and Philip, fought in the American Civil War; Philip survived but Henry did not. Born in 1841, Henry Hastings Curran left Hamilton College in 1861 to enlist in the 146th New York Volunteers, was commissioned a lieutenant colonel, and was killed at the battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864. He was memorialized through a privately published biography (see box 91, folders 768-769) three years after his death.

John Elliot Curran (1848–1890)

John Elliott Curran was born May 25, 1848, in Utica, New York, the son of Edward and Mary Langford Curran. Known as Jack, he attended Williston Academy in Easthampton, Massachusetts, before enrolling at Yale College, where he was a member of Scroll and Key and rowed on the college crew team. After his 1870 graduation, Curran spent a year in Europe with three Yale classmates; on return he entered law school at Columbia University, and afterward practiced in New York City with George F. Lincoln (Yale 1870). Writing was, however, a greater passion, and Curran soon abandoned his career to become a full-time journalist. His first published pieces had appeared in the Yale Literary Magazine , and by the 1880s his essays and stories were featured in the New Englander (New Haven), Scribner's , Century , and Harper's Monthly magazines. He also wrote for the New York Lumber Trade Journal , Forest and Stream (owned and edited by his Yale classmate George Bird Grinnell), and the Christian Union , and was a literary and drama critic for the Press (New York, NY). Curran's single published novel was Miss Frances Merley (Boston: Cupples and Hurd, 1888). A brief bibliography of his writings can be found in his entry in the Biographical Record of the Class of Seventy, Yale College, 1870-1904 . John Elliott Curran was married on May 27, 1875, to Eliza (Lilla) Phillips Mulford of New York; the couple had three children: Henry Hastings (1877-1966), Gerald (Jay) Mulford (1879-1960), and Mary Eleanor (married Henry H. Livingston; see Series VII). Curran died of heart failure at age 47 on May 18, 1890, in his home in Englewood, New Jersey, following a severe case of pneumonia, and was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery, Utica, New York, with the Curran and Langford families.

Eliza (Lilla) Phillips Mulford Curran (1852–1936)

Eliza Phillips Mulford Curran was the daughter of James H. Mulford and his second wife Mary Moore Cunningham. Known personally and professionally as Lilla, she was born in New York City and attended boarding schools run by noted educators Louisa Barber in Brattleboro, Vermont (1862-1863), and Mrs. Sylvanus G. Reed in New York City (1867-1868); the school year 1863-1864 was spent in Washington, D.C. Lilla Mulford's paternal family was based in New Haven, Connecticut, and she regularly visited there to see her relatives by marriage, the Parker, Robinson, Stone, Townsend, and Trowbridge families, in and around the city. It was in New Haven that she met John Elliott Curran, a student at Yale College. Their courtship began in 1869, and the couple was married in New York on May 27, 1875. In the late 1870s they moved to a home on East Hamilton Avenue in Englewood, New Jersey, where they raised their three children Henry Hastings (1877-1966), Gerald (Jay) Mulford (1879-1960), and Mary Eleanor (1884-1969; married Henry H. Livingston). A devout Episcopalian, Lilla Curran wrote essays and stories for the weeklies Young Christian Soldier , Christian Union , and The Churchman , in addition to features for Harper's Weekly , Demorest's Family Magazine , and the Englewood Press , where she served as literature editor. Under the pseudonym Dane Conyngham, Curran published short stories and a novel, Eunice Quince, A New England Romance (New York, Lovell, Coryell Company, 1895). She also taught music classes, held and organized recitals, and gave talks on the history of music. After her husband's death in 1890, Lilla Curran remained in Englewood but eventually returned to live in New York City, where she died on September 23, 1936; she was buried with her maternal ancestors in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Henry H. Curran (1877–1966)

Henry Hastings Curran was born in New York on November 8, 1877, the son of John E. and Eliza Mulford Curran; he was named for an uncle who had died in the Civil War. Curran was raised in Englewood, New Jersey, and graduated from Yale University (1898). He worked as a reporter at the Englewood Times , and as a reporter and editor at the New York Tribune from 1896 (summer vacations) to 1902 where, for many years, he wrote the paper's "Fresh Air Fund" stories. While with the Tribune Curran attended New York Law School, received an L.L.B. in 1900, and practiced in New York before embarking on a half-century career in public service in the city of New York. He worked in all three branches of government, executive, legislative, and judicial, with elected and appointed positions including alderman and chair of the Board of Aldermen (1911-1917), Manhattan borough president (1920-1921), Commissioner of Immigration for the Port of New York at Ellis Island (1923-1926), counsel to City Club of New York (1926-1928), executive head of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (1928-1932), director of the National Economy League (1932-1936), city magistrate (1936-1937), deputy mayor under Fiorello H. La Guardia (1937-1939), chief magistrate (1939-1945), and judge in the New York Court of Special Sessions from 1945 until he took mandatory retirement (age 70) in 1947. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1909 and for mayor of New York in 1921, but had served as acting mayor of the city several times while chair of the Board of Aldermen. Curran's commitment to public service encompassed military service as well: he was recruited to the United States Army's Officers Training Camp (O.T.C.) in Plattsburg, New York, in 1915, and won a commission as a major in the Calvary. Assigned to the 302nd Ammunition Train, he was detached with the 77th Division to base camps in Flanders and Bordeaux, and participated in military engagements in other areas of France. Taken ill while there, he was hospitalized for a time in Nice, and returned to the United States in March 1919.

As he had followed his father into law, Henry Curran emulated both his parents in his literary pursuits, beginning in 1894 when his article "Duck Hawks on the Palisades" was published in Forest and Stream . Thereafter he regularly wrote a columns, editorials, and essays for newspapers and periodicals, and fully understood the power of the media, including radio, which he regularly marshaled on behalf of his career and causes. His writings reveal his special interest in the underprivileged, children, public parks, animals, and stories of the human condition, particularly demonstrated in his writings on immigration (1924-1926) which appeared in popular periodicals including Ladies' Home Journal , Country Gentleman , Colliers , Saturday Evening Post , and fraternal organs including those issued by the Elks and the Masons. Curran published three books with Scribners, Van Tassel and Big Bill (1923), John Citizen's Job (1924), Magistrates Court (1940), and an autobiography, Pillar to Post (1941). A fourth work, "All Sorts and Conditions," an anthology of his "Topics of the Times" columns for the New York Times , short stories, and essays, published and unpublished, dating from 1934 to 1950, was organized but never published. Henry Curran married Frances (Fanny) Ford Hardy (1881-1971) in Seattle, Washington, on October 12, 1905; the couple made their home in the Washington Square neighborhood of Greenwich Village, and had no children. Henry Curran died in New York on April 8, 1966, was buried with his maternal ancestors in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

James H. Mulford (1802–1885)

James Hervey Mulford, a cotton buyer, was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut; his paternal ancestors had emigrated from England to Easthampton, New York, in the seventeenth century and to Connecticut in the eighteenth century. He married twice, first in 1826 to Rebekah Gorham Atwater (died May 17, 1843), with whom he had four children: Hervey (1827-1866); Mary (1829-1898; married James Henry Coghill); Elizabeth (1831-1879; married Charles W. Crosby); and James Hervey (1836-1885). His second marriage was in 1849 to Mary Moore Cunningham Porter (1810-1897) of Boston, the widow of Horace Porter. Two daughters, Emma (1851-1851) and Eliza Phillips (1852-1936), were born to the couple. The Mulfords primarily lived in New York City but resided for periods in Memphis, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C. Mulford was buried in New Haven's Grove Street Cemetery with his parents, first wife, and son.

Extent:

11 Linear Feet

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