Our Curtis family research only extends back two generations before our "Eliza", my grandfather's mother.

       John Curtis (c. 1769-bef. 1860) married Nancy Robbins (c. 1773-bef. 1860) in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Their children were John, William R. (Robbins?), Nancy, Sarah, and Rebecca. The parents John and Nancy must have moved to Tennessee before 1819, because in that year he was one of the signers of the petition to the Tennessee legislature to establish Wayne County. Both John and his son William R. were early filers for land in this new county. In their later years, John and Nancy made their home with his son William in Wayne County. Their names are listed in William's household in the 1850 census, but died before 1860 as their names do not appear in the next census. Their graves have not been located.

     William Curtis (c. 1769-1865) married, in Williamson County, Tennessee, Nancy Skaggs(1800-1865). In the 1820s, William was granted 412 acres of land in Wayne County by the State of Tennessee. Settling there, he is recorded as being on the first county court. For the next 40 years, he was a Justice of the Peace and a land trader. Nancy Skaggs was born in Kentucky in 1800 and died in Wayne County, Tennessee in 1865, the same year as her husband. Her family has not been definitely established, but it is most likely that her grandfather was Charles Skaggs. He and his brothers, along with their companions, including Daniel Boone, were "Long Hunters" and the first English settlers in Kentucky. In the last years of their lives, the Civil War dramatically effected this Curtis family as four sons fought for either the CSA or the USA - sometimes both. The children were Thomas, Polly, Amos, Wade, William, John, Sarah, Louisa Elizabeth (Eliza), Alcie, Eleanor and Delilah.

     Louisa Elizabeth, "Eliza" Curtis (1836-?) married, in 1852, Isaiah Blackwood.She is remembered for two incidents in her life: her telling Confederate recruiters that her prematurely white-haired husband, seen from a distance, was too old to fight; and the time she was so delighted to hear her grandson, James Blackwood, preaching, that she stood suddenly to praise him, dropping to the floor another an infant descendent whom she had forgotten was in her lap.