January 27, 1830

Antiquities collector Edwin Curtiss was born in North Lansing, New York. Curtiss was a nonprofessional field man who excavated archaeological sites and is credited by Arkansas archaeologists with making the first scientific archaeological excavation in the state. In 1879 and 1880, Curtiss and his associates spent eighty-six days excavating ancient Native American village sites along the St. Francis River in northeast Arkansas, where he collected nearly 1,000 pottery vessels and hundreds of other specimens for Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnography.