CURTIS, Thomas, clergyman, born in England about 1780; died in 1858. He came to the United States in 1829, was pastor for some years of the Wentworth Street Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and subsequently established a young ladies' school at Limestone Spring. Dr. Curtis was a man of extensive knowledge and very powerful as a preacher. While in England he was the publisher of the "Encyclopedia Metropolitana." He perished in a burning steamer on the Potomac river. --His son, Thomas F., born in England, 26 September 1815: died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 9 August 1872, was educated at a southern College, and studied theology. After holding a pastorate near Boston for several years, he accepted the chair of theology in Lewisburg University, Pennsylvania, but resigned in 1865, and in 1867 removed to Cambridge, Massachusetts. He suffered with softening of the brain for some time before his death. Dr. Curtis published "Com-reunion: the Distinction between Christian and Church Fellowship"; "Progress of Baptist Principles in the last Hundred Years "; and, after his resignation, " The Human Element in the Inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures," in which he took similar views with Bishop Colenso, but went beyond him in some particulars, repudiating both the inspiration and authenticity of much of the Old Testament and part of the New (1867).