Thomas Spicer Curlett (1847 – May 7, 1914) was a Republican farmer, postmaster and state legislator in Lancaster County, Virginia, during Reconstruction.
Early and family life He was born in Baltimore. His father, John Curlett (died February 17, 1896), was a bank director and philanthropist. He was a student at Loyola College in Baltimore in 1864.Loyola college directory on ancestry.com On November 4, 1868, he married Susie Chilton (1849-1933) of Lancaster County, who would survive him, as would their son John (1870-1944), who would also serve in the Virginia House of Delegates beginning in 1906 and also act as an oyster inspector.
Career During the American Civil War, Spicer was a private in Company B of the Maryland Volunteers Eastern Shore Infantry.History and Roster of Maryland Volunteers, War of 1861-1865, Vols. 1-2 p. 329 of 587 on ancestry.com On January 6, 1874, he became the postmaster for Litwalton in the Whitechapel district of Lancaster County.Postmaster appointments on ancestry.com Spicer represented Lancaster County in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1875 to 1879, until census reorganization combined it with nearby Richmond County. He represented both counties 1885 to 1887.Cynthia Miller Leonard, The Virginia General Assembly 1619-1978, pp. 522, 526, 542 In 1888-1889 he was one of the principal farmers in the Litwalton division of the county.Carolyn H. Jett, Lancaster County, Virginia: Where the River meets the Bay, (Lancaster County History Book Committee, 2003) p. 389 The Chesapeake Watchman lampooned his candidacy and denounced his previous affiliation with Republicans. Henry Straughan Hathaway who owned Enon Hall wrote to him denouncing his political affiliation with blacks.
Curlett may have returned to Baltimore by 1894 and worked as a salesman,Baltimore Maryland city directory on ancestry.com though his wife and son remained in Lancaster County, Virginia. T.S. and Susie officially separated in 1898, since they found it "impossible to live together as man and wife in peace and comfort, there being nothing congenial between them." He died on May 7, 1914, in Baltimore, where he had gone for medical treatment; at the time of his death he was living in Morattico.
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