Search

This addition to the Mina Curtiss Collection consists of journals, letters, and photographs belonging to her husband, Henry T. Curtiss. Items include a diary kept by Curtiss during a 1910 trip to Europe with Yale classmates and fellow Scroll and Key Society members S. Merrell Clement, Jr., J. Curtis Platt, Reginald Roome, and Earl T. Williams. The diary describes the group's travels on the S. S. Arabic to the British Isles, Holland, Germany, Venice, Scutari and Dalmatia. There is also a leather binder of photographs and letters circulated annually among Scroll and Key Society members. The inside cover contains a photographic negative of Henry Curtiss and a friend on horseback. The majority of the letters, from 1920 to 1923, are arranged first by author and then by date. Curtiss's own letters are near the end of this group, and a later photograph of him outside his Ashfield home is found after his entries. The final group of letters, from 1927 to 1928, includes reminiscences about Curtiss after his death. Related to these two volumes is the book Diary of a Trip Abroad in the Summer of 1910, by Earl Trumbull Williams. Published after Williams' early death, this book serves as a companion volume to Henry Curtiss's account of the trip. There are also eight large photographs of Curtiss alone and with friends, circa 1910. Five of the photos are card-mounted and numbered, and depict various scenes of Curtiss and classmates at the beach, at school, in Europe, and on a ship. The other three photos have been captioned, presumably by Mina Curtiss, and depict a "Keys wedding"; Curtiss with his dogs outside his Ashfield home; and Curtiss with Bobby Jones, Jack Davidson, and Fred Kennedy.