Lucius Clark Curtis was born on January 11, 1841, in Leeds, Maine, to George Washington Curtis and Nancy Rowe. His father was a farmer who owned $800 of real estate and $250 of personal property. According to the 1860 census, his father was unable to hear or talk. Curtis grew up and attended school in Leeds before beginning work as a teamster. He enlisted in the Union army on June 26, 1861, and mustered in as a private in Company D of the 12^th Massachusetts Infantry later that day. He was wounded on August 30, 1862, in the Second Battle of Bull Run. He spent the next two months in a hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, before being discharged on October 28, 1862. According to one surgeon, he was “totally disabled from obtaining his subsistence from manual labor.” He applied for a federal pension in December 1862 and secured one soon afterward. After leaving the military, he apparently spent several years in Boston, Massachusetts, before settling in Cumberland County, Maine. He married Mary S. Holland in the mid-1860s, and they had at least two children: Eleanor, born around 1868; and Julia, born around 1870. In 1870, Curtis was working as a farmer, and he owned $1,800 of real estate and $500 of personal property. He died in Maine on August 11, 1907.

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