EARLY SETTLERS

In 1869, John Gould Curtis and his wife, Mary, together with David Curtis and his wife, Sarah, came to Ludlow. They purchased vast tracts of virgin timber lands, covered with valuable pine and hemlock trees, from original owners who had obtained their titles from the Holland Land Company. Logging operations were started and a sawmill, under the Partnership name of J. G. and David Curtis, was erected.

In 1885, however, David Curtis withdrew from the partnership with his brother and moved to New Haven, Connecticut. J. G. Curtis then continued in business alone. He built a store and post office in what was then the western end of town.

The old store was located across the tracks from his home, where a garage now stands. There was a meat market in the basement and the other two stories were occupied by a dry goods and grocery department. The post office and J. G. Curtis office were in the east end of the building.

Every employee of J. G. Curtis traded at his store. He was given a book in which he was credited with his earnings and charged with his purchases, and was given the balance in cash.

J. G. Curtis's logging operations brought more people to Ludlow. Houses were built and one or two more stores were opened. Ludlow was primarily a lumbering town and would have undoubtedly remained so had it not been for "J. G."

The trees were rapidly being stripped from the hills, but there remained on hand a vast amount of hemlock bark which was being shipped to the Sheffield tanneries. "J. G." had a desire to make use of this bark himself, so he proceeded to erect a tannery of his own to utilize his hemlock bark. This later developed into the J. G. Curtis Leather Company and was sold to the present corporation in 1901.

About the same time that J. G. Curtis's family settled in Ludlow, L. B. Byham, C. B. Springer and John Gibbs came to Ludlow. Both Byham and Gibbs were former employees of J. G. Curtis in his tannery in Emporium, Pennsylvania. L. B. Byham had charge of the tanning processes and John Gibbs directed the logging, bark peeling, and woods operations of "J. G.'s" interests. The Byham family later moved to the state of Washington, the Springers to Kinzua, but John Gibbs remained on his farm on Gibbs Hill until his death in 1924. The Curtis family left Ludlow in 1907 for Erie and Mr. J. G. Curtis died eleven years later, at the age of 88

In the early eighties, J. Augustus Jones operated a "cider-joint" which burned but was later rebuilt. He ran a meat and fish route to Kinzua selling fresh fish shipped to him over the newly constructed railway from Lake Erie. Leaving the meat and fish business he became carnival conscious and started out on the road with a five-legged calf, a two-headed sheep, and a few trained dogs. The next time he made an appearence in Ludlow he was traveling with a tent show. Eventually, he became the largest carnival owner in the United States. He lies in Warren Cemetery, and whenever a carnival comes to this section of the country, it inevitably pays homage to him at his grave.