to Portland, Maine, where Curtis & Son made a fortune in the industry they had started in a humble way. John Curtis was a hardworking man, and had a reputation of being. perfectly honest. He died highly respected by all who knew him. He married Mary B. Bacon, by whom he had three children: John B., Charles H. and Mary E.

(II) John Bacon, son of John and Mary Brown (Bacon) Curtis, born in Hampden, October 10, 1827, died in Portland, June 13, 1897, aged seventy years. He attended the common schools a short time in his boyhood, and then turned to making a living for himself and assisting his father and the other members of his family. He worked for a time on a farm for five dollars a month, later he received sixteen dollars, and at last twenty-four dollars a month. Many years afterward he said that the proudest day of his life was when he gave his mother the first money he received for his labor. He worked in the woods for a time as a swamper; that is, he cleared away the underbrush, and blocked out the roads through the woods. There his attention became fixed upon the practicability of gathering and selling spruce gum as a business. After leaving the woods he talked with his father about the idea. John Curtis was a cautious man, and he doubted if any one would want to buy gum for chewing or other purposes. The matter was finally decided when Mrs. Curtis said, "Try it." The family moved to Bangor, and there, over an old Franklin stove in the kitchen of the Curtis house, the first lot of gum was made. The first label was printed. The "State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum" it was called, and the firm of Curtis & Son sprang into existence. When a sufficient amount had been made to market, John B. Curtis took it to Portland. For two days he walked the streets and tried to find a buyer among the merchants, but found none. third day found him still talking spruce gum, but to those who could not be made to see there was money in it. At last he found a man who bought his merchandise, which at first he had hard work to sell, but which soon sold itself. The gum business up to 1848 did not afford employment enough for two, and John B. went on the road as a pedler, and sold Curtis' Spruce Gum, patent medicine, and so on, having for his motto, "Give a man all you can for his money, while making a fair profit yourself." The motto was strictly lived up to, and the business at home and on the road prospered greatly. He was very shrewd and very energetic, and drove the best team.

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ever attached to a pedler's wagon, with the single exception of the pair Colonel James Fisk owned when he was on the road. It was by driving the best team he could get that Mr. Curtis "got around" his opponents, for in those days the wholesale pedler was a great New England institution, and the most active man got the principal part of the patronage. "When the other fellows thought I was in bed," said Mr. Curtis once, when talking of his early days, "I was on the road. By driving nights I got in ahead many times, and had the trade all to myself." He began this work in 1850, and in his travels with his cart covered all New England, and the first year he collected six thousand dollars in money. The time soon came, however, when, in the opinion of father and son, there was money to be made in some other direction, that John B. could be of more use in a wider field, and that the West should be included in the territory their business should cover. So John B. Curtis changed from pedler to commercial traveler, and was perhaps the first of the drummers. It may be some one else will be found who was on the road before his time, but it is safe to say that he had a larger circuit than any drummer before-if any went before him-or since. He was one of the first, if not the first commercial traveler to go West as the representative of an Eastern business house. He went all over the West in advance of the railroads, opening up busiIn those days journeys were made with some difficulty. For example, he went from Portland to Philadelphia by water, thence by canal to Pittsburg, from Pittsburg to St. Louis by the Ohio river, from St. Louis to St. Paul on the Mississippi, making the entire distance by water. He carried his stock with him, took orders, gave credit for one year, made money and many friends, and had over one thousand of the customers of forty years before, and their successors in the West alone. In speaking of his early experiments in the West as a commercial traveler, Mr. Curtis once said in after years: "I have passed hundreds of nights camping out on long trips, with only a blanket for a covering and the ground for a bed. We, who drummed the trade in the West then in behalf of Eastern houses, did not mind that, but we did object to the rattlesnake sometimes. It didn't pay to have them get too familiar. We were happy when we could travel by canal-boat or by steamboat, but the dreadful Western stages were what tried our patience. Time and again, but for the fact that my samples and

ness.