OTWAY CURRY

    Otway Curry was born March 26, 1804, and married Miss Mary, daughter of Andrew Noteman; he resided for a time on the Jones farm on Big Darby, in Jerome, then removed to Marysville.

    Otway Curry was born March 26, 1804, on the site of what is now Greenfield, Highland County, Ohio. and was the son of Col. James Curry, a veteran officer of the Revolution, who came with his family to the territory now included in Union County in 1811.  Otway Curry was a pupil in the log schoolhouse near the home of his boyhood, and also received much instruction from his parents, of a higher order than that imparted by the half-educated teachers whose services were in demand among the pioneers-even though they performed a good work in their way.  The father was summoned to Chillicothe, a member of the Legislature, in 1812; the eldest son went out with the army to do battle for his country, and the rest of the family remained upon the farm under the superintendence of the prudent and patriotic mother.  Alone in the wilderness, surrounded by savages, they were never molested, though often alarmed.  On one occasion their horses showed every indication of fear; their dogs barked furiously, now rushing into the cornfield, and then retreating with bristling hair, as if driven.  The family, concluding that Indians were near, prepared to fight as well as pray.  The mother, in marshaling her forces, stationed young Otway and his brother Stephenson on guard, Otway at the house corner, and Stephenson at the barn, with loaded guns at a rest, and charged them to take aim and fire as soon as they saw an Indian.  Fortunately, there was no attack made upon the domestic fort.

    As the boy grow to man's estate, he read the small but choice collection of books in his father's library; and, before he came of age, he attended a select school in the neighborhood taught by Mr. C., a farmer of good education.  In 1823, being determined to learn a trade, he went to Lebanon, Ohio, and there learned the art of carpentry.  He was subsequently located a short time each at Cincinnati and Detroit, and later at Marion, Ohio.  In company with Henry Mason, both possessed of a romantic nature, he made and launched a skiff at Millville, a small village on the Scioto River, and descended that stream to it its mouth, proceeding thence down the Ohio to Cincinnati.  At the latter point he engaged passage for himself and a box of tools, on a flatboat, and voyaged slowly down the Ohio and Mississippi to Port Gibson, where he spent one year.  About this time he summoned courage to offer anonymously some verses to the newspapers, among which were his sweet poems, "My Mother," and "Kingdom Come."  His lines won for him admiration at the outset, and it never diminished in degree during all the subsequent years.  Returning to Cincinnati, he contributed more freely to the press, over the signature of "Abdallah," and at this time formed the acquaintance of William D. Gallagher, who was induced to seek, upon perusal of his stanzas, "The Minstrel's Home."  This acquaintance was improved by time, and unbroken by jealousy, envy, or serious misunderstanding.

    Mr. Curry had studied law before his removal to Xenia, but had practiced little up to that time.  He became master of his profession, and one of his ablest competitors said of him that, "although he entered the law late in life, and practiced it scarcely ten years, yet he had no superior as a sound lawyer, within the range of his practice, and bade fair, if his life had been spared a few years longer, to become an eminent legal mind."  In 1850, he was elected a member of the second Ohio Constitutional Convention, and with manly firmness and dignity he resisted some of the principles of the Instrument which that able body elaborated.  In 1858, he purchased the Scioto Gazette, a daily paper published at Chillicothe, whither he removed.  He continued to edit this paper with characteristic ability about one year, at the expiration of which time, owing to the failing health of his wife, he sold out and returned to Marysville, where he resumed the practice of his profession.  In January, 1854, he was President of the Ohio Editorial Convention, at Cincinnati, and made many friends among the members, who had before known him only by his writings.  He became a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1848, and continued in that relation until his death, which occurred February 16, 1855, after a severe illness of two weeks' duration.  A well-known biographer (the late Bishop Thomson) wrote of him:

"Mr. Curry's name is without a spot.  In early life he labored with his hands, in later years with his mind-always rendering either moral or material benefit for all that he received.  When called to office, it was by unsolicited suffrages, and, when placed in power, he was no tool of party.  No speeches for sinister ends, no motion for faction purposes, no empty declamations or busy demonstrations or crafty schemes disgraced his political career.  Guided by a sense of duty to his country, he walked heedless alike of private threats and popular clamor.  At the bar he was the shield of innocence, the terror of guilt and the moderator of Justice.  Though liable, like other men, to be deceived by his client and influenced by his passions, he would not enforce what he deemed an unjust claim or prosecute a just one in an unjust mode.  As an editor, he manifested the same integrity, though sorely tried.  Once determined on his course, he stopped at no obstacles, heeded no persecution, and declined no conflict.  He was, however, too modest, unambitious and averse to public life for a leader.  He was a man of great social and domestic virtue.  As a neighbor, he was considerate, peaceful, obliging and hospitable; looking with patience upon the weakness, and with silence upon the wrongs of others, he cherished no malignity, fomented no disputes, flattered no patron, and pierced no victim.  Though not insensible to in meanness and injury, he was too respectful of himself and too charitable toward others to indulge in any utterances that would give pain, unless they were necessary to a prudent maintenance of right.  He was as far from being a cynic as a parasite. * * It was at his home he found a paradise.  Thither his steps tended when the toils of the day were over ; there, among his little ones, he talked as a child, he thought as a child, he played as a child; there, too, he rejoiced with the wife of his youth, and found in her smiles a recompense for his labors and a refuge from his cares.  He was a man of fervent and unostentatious piety, and he delighted in simplicity of worship. * * * * Mr. Curry's chief characteristic was his taste.  His mind was in harmony with nature; he had a relish for all beauty.  To him it was not in vain that God painted the landscape green, cast the channels of the streams in graceful curves, light ed up the arch of night, and turned the gates of the day on golden hinges amid the anthems of a grateful world.  No thirst for wealth, no conflict for honor, no lust for meaner pleasures destroyed his sensibility to the harmonies and proportions of the universe. From a child, he was fond of nature and solitude; as he grew up poets were his companions; with them he sympathized; with them he sat, side by side, in the enchanted land of song; to see, to enjoy what the idle, the worldly and the profane cannot-this was not merely his pastime, but his living.  A luxurious melancholy chastened his spirit and mellowed the light which it reflected. * * * * The love of beauty is usually associated with the capacity to reproduce it; that is taste, this is art.  Mr. Curry's art was not proportionate to his taste ; it manifested itself in the sweet music of his flute and the sweeter strains of his verse ; the former is lost in the empty air, the latter will float down the river of time.  His poetry will not be relished by the masses; it has no paeans of battle, no provocations of mirth, no mockery of misery, no strokes of malice.  It is the song of a religious soul; faith is the bond which links its stanzas, a faith that brings heaven near to earth and man into fellowship with angels.  Like wine, it will be pronounced better as it grows older; not because it will improve, but because the world's taste will.  What he uttered we may suppose was little compared with what he bore away with 'him into heaven, where he will take up the harp that he laid down too early on earth."

    Mr. Curry was a man of fine form, tall and well proportioned, possessed a broad, lofty brow, and an open countenance.  He wore no beard and was seen always in office and street freshly and cleanly shaven.  His taste was unacceptionable in dress, in language, in reading, and, indeed in all things.  He was extremely cautious and careful, both in his speech and his writings, and nothing from his pen was ever permitted to go to the press until it had first been scrutinized, word by word, for the sake of correctness and improvement.  From this fact, the criticism which his poems will bear is easily explained.  He was, in all respects, a man which any community could ill afford to lose, and the sorrow of his friends and relatives at his untimely taking away wag profuse and most sincere.

** The 1883 Beer's HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY gives two accounts for Otway Curry.