John Curd, Jr. (1726-1802), SAR Patriot Number P-142344, DAR Ancestor # A028691

John Curd, Jr., was born on 14 April 1726 to John Curd (1706-1752) and Elizabeth Ann Price Curd (1707-1774)  in Henrico County, Virginia.  This part of Henrico County, above the fall line of the James River at Richmond, became Goochland County in 1728.  He married Lucy Brent (1735-1815) on 7 April 1759 in Lancaster County, on Virginia’s northern neck.  They had five sons and four daughters.  Both the Price and the Brent families had deep Virginia roots. 

John Curd served during 1781 in the Lincoln County (Virginia) militia in Captain John Martin’s company under the command of Colonel Stephen Trigg.  In 1782, he served in the companies of Captain Samuel Scott and Captain John Smith, under the command of Colonel Benjamin Logan.  Finally, also in 1782, he participated in the raid by General George Rogers Clark on the Shawnee tribes in Ohio in retribution for the Battle of Blue Licks in which Colonel Trigg had been killed. 

John Curd was one of at least ten related Curds from central Virginia who served the Patriot cause in the Revolutionary War.  About half of them are named John Curd, so they are frequently confused.  There is a pistol in the collection of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, DC, that belonged to his cousin, also named John Curd  (1751-1819). 

During the 1780s, John Curd (1726-1797) was sent into Kentucky, the westernmost part of the Virginia, on official missions by the administration of Governor Patrick Henry.  The Virginia legislature deeded him 1600 acres of land for services rendered and, in about 1785, he moved with his wife and family to Kentucky.  He went first to Harrodsburg, during the time of his friend Daniel Boone.  The Kentucky Historical Society has the original of a receipt Daniel Boone signed, dated 12 November 1792, for a fee of $25 that John Curd paid to him for a survey Boone had conducted. 

In 1786, the Virginia legislature granted John Curd a charter, signed by Governor Patrick Henry, to operate a ferry across the Kentucky River.  The ferry was located at the mouth of the Dick’s (later Dix) River.  Curd was also authorized to build and operate tobacco inspection warehouses and a town at the ferry landing.

John Curd built a house, which still stands near Wilmore, Kentucky, high on the right (east) bank of the Kentucky River.  The house is symmetrical, one and one half story Federal style, of Flemish bond brick, with a central passage.  It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.  There is a family cemetery at the west end of the house, perhaps the final resting place of John Curd and other members of his family.  (Another possible burial site is near Shakertown and the now-extinct Curdsville, across the river in today’s Mercer County.)  There is a state historical marker at the entrance road to his house, by the hand laid stone wall.

Kentucky was admitted to the Union as the 15th state on 1 June 1792.  Kentucky then consisted of three counties — Lincoln, Fayette, and Jefferson; it now has 120 counties.  Mercer County was split from Lincoln in 1785.  The property upon which the John Curd house stands is now in Jessamine County, formed out of Mercer in 1798.   

John Curd died, in what was then Mercer County, Kentucky, before December 1797, when his sons and executors conducted an estate sale. 

Citation: Curd, Daniel S: The Curd Family in America: Eight Generations, published by the author, 2020, Madison, Wisconsin, pp.  20-21.