Biography - Robert H. Curry

Hon. ROBERT H. CURRY is the present representative of Bossier Parish in the General Assembly of the State, but was born in Fairﬁeld District, S. 0., November 26, 1842, being the son of Robert P. and Mary Caroline (Parr) Curry, the former a native of South Carolina, and the latter of Warrington, Va. Mr. Curry, Sr., was a lifelong Democrat, and was a farmer by occupation, dying in South Carolina in 1884, at the age of eighty-four years. His wife died when the subject of this sketch was a boy of six years. Our subject’s only schooling was received in the country schools of Fairﬁeld District. Leaving the school room and his books in the early part of 1862, he joined Company F of the Twelfth South Carolina Infantry. His ﬁrst engagement was at Port Royal, S. C., and when that place was taken by the Federals, he managed to escape, and served the remainder of the war in the Virginian army under Gens. A. P. Hill and Stonewall Jackson, being in all the principal battles up to the engagement of Spottsylvania, where he was captured and held fourteen months a prisoner, four months of which time he was held as a hostage, being conﬁned in a cell 4x6 feet, not seeing the light of the sun during these long months of solitude. At Fort Delaware, under command of Gen. Scheoff, U. S. A., being a prisoner in close conﬁnement, he was by order of the Secretary of War, paroled and released just before the fall of Petersburg. On his arrival at home, the booming of Sherman's artillery greeted his ears. Not being permitted to bear arms, under penalty of death (condition of parole), he assisted the sheriff in preserving the record of his district. His father’s home being devastated by Sherman’s raid, he determined to unite with his command again and risk the consequences, which he did the evening before the surrender near Farmville, Va. He was severely wounded by a musketball at the second battle of Manassas in the right ankle, which makes him a cripple at the present writing. After the close of the war he spent some months superintending a merchant mill owned by his uncle, Henry W. Parr. In the fall of 1865 he came to Bossier Parish in company with several citizens of Fairﬁeld, one of whom, Mrs. Margaret (Martin) Bell, soon afterward became his wife. She died of heart disease in the fall of 1881, leaving three children: Carrie (who was educated at the Minden Female Seminary), Robert Turner (educated at Thatcher Institute, Shreveport, acquiting himself with honors, now a student of law), and Maggie E. Curry (now a student of Kate P. Nelson Seminary of Shreveport). January 8, 1888, Mr. Curry wedded Miss Mollie B. Banks of this parish, and by her has one son, Glenn Hamilton, named for a schoolmate and war-comrade. Mr. Curry has been a consistent supporter of Democratic principles, and in 1887 his party showed their appreciation by electing him to the State Legislature, the last session of which will be ever remembered in this State on account of House Bill No. 214, providing for an amendment to the Constitution recharteriug the Louisiana State Lottery. Mr. Curry’s name is enrolled as one of the thirty-two that opposed the bill in the Lower House of the General Assembly. Mr. Curry, being a farmer, has always been interested in agricultural affairs, encouraging and assisting in all agricultural organizations, being an active member of the Grange, the Alliance, and others, often being chairman of the executive committees of these organizations, also a member of the Democratic executive committee of the parish. He is a member of the Presbyterian Church, and socially belongs to the orders of A. L. of H. and the K. of P.

Contributed 29 Aug 2020 by Norma Hass, extracted from Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana, published in 1890, pages 131-132.