(603) Col. Curtis died August 25th, 1891. There was always a high respect and filial regard entertained on the part of the members of the regiment for their late commander; and the survivors will be gratified to have here recorded Col. Caldwell's memorial address, before referred to, upon his life and character.
COLONEL CALDWELL'S ADDRESS.
(604) Comrades and Friends:—General Curtis is gone. He was a grandson of John Curtis, a patriot soldier of 1776.
(605) General Curtis was born April 18, 1821, on now historic ground where the great battle of Antietam was afterwards fought.
(606) In 1832 his parents removed to the town of West Liberty, in Ohio county, where on becoming of age he engaged and continued in business as a merchant until he became a soldier in 1862. In 1861 he was a member of the State convention at Wheeling, which organized a loyal State government for Virginia.
(607) In 1776 one of the members of the Continental Congress advocated unanimity in supporting the immortal declaration of our country's independence by reminding his fellow-congressmen that "they must all hang together, or they would all hang separately." In that Wheeling convention every man had to face the same situation. Each one who cast his lot and his vote there on the Union side risked his life, his fortune and his sacred honor on what was then a doubtful result, and against the vast majority of the people of his State, against the seductions of State sovereignty, and often against the strongest influence of family ties. General Curtis had a brother who was colonel of the Twenty-third Virginia Confederate Regiment and was killed at the battle of Slaughter Mountain.
(608) If the South succeeded, death or exile, confiscation of property and business and social proscription were sure to each member of that convention. It was a convention of Southerners true to the old flag without an appropriation. From its results was born West Virginia, fair and patriotic, devoted and loyal, in the sisterhood of States.
(609) It is one of the proud memories that we cherish of our comrade that he served not falteringly among those true and devoted men. In 1861 he raised and tendered to the old war governor, Francis H. Pierpont, a company of volunteers. Again in 1862 he enlisted a company which became Company D of the Twelfth West Virginia Infantry. He was elected captain.
(610) In 1863 the nine captains of the regiment, other than himself, and the other commissioned officers, elected him major. As such he commanded the regiment until January, 1864, when his worth was again recognized by his election by his fellow-officers of the regiment as colonel, and their choice was ratified by Governor Boreman. Holding that distinguished rank, he commanded generally a brigade, sometimes his regiment, until the close of the war.
(611) Even while thus serving he suffered from disease, but was a soldier who never lost a day's duty in those trying years, or answered a surgeon's roll call. Whoever else was absent, he was always "present for duty."