Curtis, Dr Samuel ( - 1861)

Born:

free settler and magistrate, superintendent of Nanima station, Wellington Valley,

Career Highlights

Dr Samuel Curtis, formerly an administrator at the Norfolk Island penal settlement, was employed as manager of J.B. Montefiore’s Nanima station at Wellington Valley from around 1835. He was appointed magistrate and sat on the Wellington Bench. He left Wellington Valley in 1841 but returned permanently three years later. A surviving 1857 map of Wellington Valley is annotated in Curtis' hand, highlighting the site of the original buildings at Nanima station "where I resided with Mr Montefiore". It also shows Curtis' holdings on the Macquarie River below Montefiores, where a couple of large blocks between the River and the Dubbo Rd, with a 64 acre garden and buildings on the River, are marked "my house, kitchen etc". Dr Curtis was remembered as a "a tall gentlemanly old man" who never married ("Lyth"). In 1854, he was reputedly involved in what is believed to be the last pistol duel fought in Australia (with Mr. B. Sheridan), the site marked today by a brass plaque on a cairn erected in Teamster's Park in Gibbs Street, Montefiores (Wellington). Curtis died in 1861 in a house in Montefiore's Street, Wellington.