Josiah M. Curtis

He carried the colours into the fort after two bearers fell.

Josiah Montgomery Curtis was born in Ohio County, in what is now West Virginia, on 16 November 1844. He was the son of William Baker Curtis and Hannah Montgomery. He attended local schools and West Liberty Academy before the Civil War interrupted his education. His father also became a Union officer, making military service a shared experience within the family.

Curtis enlisted in the 12th West Virginia Infantry in August 1862, initially serving as a private. He became a sergeant in Company D and received a second lieutenant’s commission in Company I in November 1864. In January 1865 he was assigned as an aide-de-camp with the Second Brigade, Second Division, XXIV Corps. His service thus moved from the ranks into commissioned and staff responsibilities while he was still only twenty.

On 2 April 1865, the regiment took part in the final assaults around Petersburg, Virginia. During the attack on Fort Gregg, two of its colour bearers fell. Curtis took up the regimental flag and continued towards the Confederate position. His Medal of Honor citation records that he was “among the first to gain a foothold” inside the enemy works with the colours (Congressional Medal of Honor Society, https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/josiah-m-curtis). The award recognized both his recovery of the flag and his part in carrying the assault into the fort.

The Medal of Honor was awarded on 12 May 1865. Curtis attained first lieutenant’s rank before leaving the Army that June. Rather than continue a military career after the war, he returned to the education that his enlistment had interrupted and began studying medicine under a local physician.

He graduated from Miami Medical College in Cincinnati in March 1867 as his class’s valedictorian. He then established a practice in Marshall County, West Virginia. The 1870 census identified him as a physician, confirming the civilian profession he had pursued after returning from the Army. In 1874 he moved his practice to Moundsville.

Curtis died suddenly at his father’s home in West Liberty on 17 June 1875, after attending commencement exercises at Bethany College. He was thirty. He was buried in West Liberty Cemetery. His brief postwar life was therefore an active medical career, following a progression from teenage volunteer to decorated officer during the closing campaigns of the war.