Natalie Curtis Burlin: A Life in Native and African American Music

1. An "Atmosphere of Culture and High Purpose": Family Influences in a Changing America

1 Family Influences in a Changing America natalie curtis, an “attractive and amiable child with large frank blue eyes, pink cheeks and golden hair,” was born in New York City on April 26, 1876, the fourth of six children of Edward and Augusta Curtis.1 Natalie and her siblings, Julia, Constance, George De Clyver, Bridgham, and Marian, grew up in a period of significant transformation in American life. Indeed, Curtis’s family epitomized many of the changes Americans underwent in the second half of the nineteenth century. The experiences and aspirations of her grandfather George Curtis, her paternal uncle George William Curtis, and her father, Edward, reveal the effects of the social, cultural, economic, and political changes that Americans both celebrated and feared. Curtis’s family influenced her later search for an American identity and shaped the ways she would try, like many other Americans, to understand her changing world. The close emotional and personal ties Curtis maintained with many family members, along with the financial and social resources of a connected and moderately well-todo family, provided her with a basis of support and encouragement 16 throughout her life. Curtis was anheir of “old” New England families, many of whom had actively identified with the Transcendentalist movement and abolitionist reform, who had recently completed the transition to the New York cultural and social scene, and who advanced progressive reforms. Her later work with Native American and African American music is understandable in light of her family’s influence. Curtis’s father’s side of the family traced its lineage back to colonial New England, where Henry Curtis and May Guy Curtis arrived in Sudbury, Massachusetts, in 1636.2 Curtis’s grandfather George Curtis (1796–1856), an ambitious banker in Providence, Rhode Island, helped bring about the shift of financial and cultural capital from New England to New York. He helped modernize American commerce and business as he advanced his family into the new urban elite. After several promotions at his bank he married into the socially and politically connected Burrill family. His young bride, Mary, was the daughter of James Burrill, the chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and a senator in the U.S. Congress (1817–20). Her uncle Tristram Burgess served in the state supreme court and in the U.S. Congress. In addition to such crucial social and political connections, Mary, described as “one of the most beautiful and accomplished ladies of the period,” enhanced the cultural and educational life of the family.3 The union produced two sons, James Burrill and George William, but proved to be a short-lived one when Mary died in 1826. George cared for the motherless boys as best he could, alternately sending them off to school and placing them in the care of relatives. In 1835 he remarried into another prominent Providence family. Julia Bridgham, age twenty-four, was the daughter of Samuel Willard Bridgham, a noted lawyer and the first mayor of Providence. This marriage further cemented George’s social standing. As one historian comments, the “Curtises, Burrills, and Bridghams were among a circle of the most politically and socially prominent families in 17 Rhode Island.”4 Julia, only twelve years older than the eldest Curtis son, took on the role of companion rather than mother to the two boys. Commentators described Natalie Curtis’s grandmother as a “charming and talented” woman who “read widely and wrote poetry with skill and was possessed of a fund of good sense and of a great vivacity.”5 George and Julia had four sons: Natalie’s father, Edward; John Green, a New York physician; Samuel, who died shortly after the Civil War; and Joseph, who died in the war. Although Providence offered the Curtis family many opportunities , notably a rich cultural life infused with the spirit of the Transcendentalists and chances for civic office holding, New York City lured an ambitious George Curtis to relocate in February 1839. The city attracted talented men like him because of the opportunities presented by the rapid expansion of trade and manufacturing. George accepted a position at the newly organized Bank of Commerce and gained a reputation as an able banker, leading to his presidency of the Continental Bank of New York in 1844. A biographer asserts that George was “characterized by shrewd business ability, coupled with an outstanding reputation for honesty and trustworthiness.” His reputation opened other doors in the...