Curtis Sisters Ahead of their Time
By Michael Whitmer, June 3, 2010
Years removed from her final tournament victory, Margaret Curtis still took great pleasure from golf and made it a big part of her life, for vastly different reasons than when she started playing in the 1890s, one of the first Americans to try this curious new game that had been dominated by Brits and Scots. So it wasn't uncommon to see Curtis lie down at the top of a thick, grassy hill on a golf course and start rolling, wearing the clothes - long, heavy skirt, long-sleeve shirt, maybe even a hat - made popular by female golfers at the turn of the 20th century.
The rolling, you see, was Curtis's way of feeling for golf balls in an area that she knew harbored hundreds. The balls she found would then be washed and hand-delivered to a veterans' hospital in Bedford, combining Curtis's two lifelong passions: Golf and social service.
More than 100 years after becoming one of the finest golfers in the United States, the on-course exploits of Margaret Curtis and her sister, Harriot, will be remembered again with the 36th playing of the Curtis Cup next week at Essex County Club, the course near their family's estate where they learned how to play, won championships, and grew old on, passing along golf secrets and stories for decades. Responsible for the creation of the biennial matches pitting the best female amateurs from the US against those from Great Britain & Ireland - and also donating the trophy - the Curtis sisters will be rightly celebrated when the matches finally return home. The Essex County Club hosted the Curtis Cup once before, in 1938.
"It's a great tribute to them. They started the Curtis Cup because they felt it was awful that the British and the Americans didn't have something like the men did," said Laura Cutler of Manchester, who befriended the sisters while a young member at Essex. "They started this up and it's been very successful."
It took five years of negotiating, but the sisters - along with the US Golf Association and the Ladies Golf Union - finally saw their dream realized in 1932, the US team winning at Wentworth, England, starting a streak that has seen the Yanks win 26 meetings, lose six, and halve three. Except for a break from 1940-46 because of World War II, the matches have been held every two years since, quickly becoming, and remaining, the pinnacle of women's amateur golf.
Appropriate, considering the sisters' superlative playing record. Margaret and Harriot took to the game right away and displayed serious talent. Margaret qualified, as a 13-year-old, for the 1897 US Women's Amateur, held at Essex. She reached the final match at the 1905 Women's Amateur. But Harriot - 2 years older - was the first to win it, capturing the 1906 Women's Amateur at Brae Burn, the only time she would triumph. Harriot did advance to the final match of the Women's Amateur the following year at Midlothian Country Club near Chicago. But she lost, 7 and 6, to Margaret, the lone time the sisters met in the tournament's championship match. Margaret went on to win two more Women's Amateur titles: In 1911, at Baltusrol, and 1912, at Essex. Margaret won four Massachusetts state amateur titles, Harriot one.
Their athletic pursuits - Margaret was also a national doubles champion in tennis - are impressive enough, but an argument could be made that they get outflanked by the work the sisters did away from the fields of play. The youngest two of 10 children, born into a family of privilege that split time between Boston and Manchester, Margaret and Harriot took to causes most would deem noble, and hardly in some ceremonial role.
Margaret earned a degree from the School of Social Work at Simmons, and together with Harriot, opened the Maverick Dispensary in East Boston in 1909, providing medical care at minimal or no cost to mostly Italian-American patients. Then, a year before the United States entered World War I, Margaret shipped to France and joined a Red Cross affiliate, assisting refugees displaced by the fighting. She stayed four years, and also did similar work in Greece.
Harriot loved the arts, was also involved in charitable work, and in the late 1920s became a dean at Hampton Institute, a predominantly black college in Virginia. It was there that she discovered Dorothy Maynor, and thanks to Harriot's relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the soprano had a private audition with the BSO's conductor in 1939. Maynor became one of the country's most prominent concert singers, and founded the Harlem School of the Arts. Few knew she owed her start to Harriot Curtis.
"For women of that era, they were quite amazing," said Lee Herter, who also came to know Margaret Curtis as a young Essex member. "But they were very down-to-earth, normal people."
Neither married, and both lived at the family estate in Manchester until their deaths. Margaret died in 1965, on Christmas, at age 82, discovered in her bed by Harriot, who would pass away nine years later, at 93.
Their involvement with women's golf dates to the earliest years of the sport being played in the United States, and their contributions to the game will live on through the matches, which they had big dreams for. The inscription on the cup reads: "To stimulate friendly rivalry among the women golfers of many lands."
Because of the Curtis sisters, 16 young women will gather in Massachusetts next week, putting on hold promising professional careers for one final opportunity to play strictly for the love of the game. It's a flame that never failed to flicker in the hearts of Margaret and Harriot Curtis, who complemented their heroics on the course with inspirational actions away from it.
"I just love the fact that we have all this history, and we have the future colliding. Our Curtis sisters and the Curtis Cup, with the best young women in the world, coming to play here," said Anne Barton, an Essex member who is chairing next week's three-day tournament, which starts Friday. "We've always known who the Curtis sisters were at this club, but I don't think anyone had a true appreciation for what they did for golf, and for outside golf. That's what fascinates me."
By Michael Whitmer, June 3, 2010
Years removed from her final tournament victory, Margaret Curtis still took great pleasure from golf and made it a big part of her life, for vastly different reasons than when she started playing in the 1890s, one of the first Americans to try this curious new game that had been dominated by Brits and Scots. So it wasn't uncommon to see Curtis lie down at the top of a thick, grassy hill on a golf course and start rolling, wearing the clothes - long, heavy skirt, long-sleeve shirt, maybe even a hat - made popular by female golfers at the turn of the 20th century.
The rolling, you see, was Curtis's way of feeling for golf balls in an area that she knew harbored hundreds. The balls she found would then be washed and hand-delivered to a veterans' hospital in Bedford, combining Curtis's two lifelong passions: Golf and social service.
More than 100 years after becoming one of the finest golfers in the United States, the on-course exploits of Margaret Curtis and her sister, Harriot, will be remembered again with the 36th playing of the Curtis Cup next week at Essex County Club, the course near their family's estate where they learned how to play, won championships, and grew old on, passing along golf secrets and stories for decades. Responsible for the creation of the biennial matches pitting the best female amateurs from the US against those from Great Britain & Ireland - and also donating the trophy - the Curtis sisters will be rightly celebrated when the matches finally return home. The Essex County Club hosted the Curtis Cup once before, in 1938.
"It's a great tribute to them. They started the Curtis Cup because they felt it was awful that the British and the Americans didn't have something like the men did," said Laura Cutler of Manchester, who befriended the sisters while a young member at Essex. "They started this up and it's been very successful."
It took five years of negotiating, but the sisters - along with the US Golf Association and the Ladies Golf Union - finally saw their dream realized in 1932, the US team winning at Wentworth, England, starting a streak that has seen the Yanks win 26 meetings, lose six, and halve three. Except for a break from 1940-46 because of World War II, the matches have been held every two years since, quickly becoming, and remaining, the pinnacle of women's amateur golf.
Appropriate, considering the sisters' superlative playing record. Margaret and Harriot took to the game right away and displayed serious talent. Margaret qualified, as a 13-year-old, for the 1897 US Women's Amateur, held at Essex. She reached the final match at the 1905 Women's Amateur. But Harriot - 2 years older - was the first to win it, capturing the 1906 Women's Amateur at Brae Burn, the only time she would triumph. Harriot did advance to the final match of the Women's Amateur the following year at Midlothian Country Club near Chicago. But she lost, 7 and 6, to Margaret, the lone time the sisters met in the tournament's championship match. Margaret went on to win two more Women's Amateur titles: In 1911, at Baltusrol, and 1912, at Essex. Margaret won four Massachusetts state amateur titles, Harriot one.
Their athletic pursuits - Margaret was also a national doubles champion in tennis - are impressive enough, but an argument could be made that they get outflanked by the work the sisters did away from the fields of play. The youngest two of 10 children, born into a family of privilege that split time between Boston and Manchester, Margaret and Harriot took to causes most would deem noble, and hardly in some ceremonial role.
Margaret earned a degree from the School of Social Work at Simmons, and together with Harriot, opened the Maverick Dispensary in East Boston in 1909, providing medical care at minimal or no cost to mostly Italian-American patients. Then, a year before the United States entered World War I, Margaret shipped to France and joined a Red Cross affiliate, assisting refugees displaced by the fighting. She stayed four years, and also did similar work in Greece.
Harriot loved the arts, was also involved in charitable work, and in the late 1920s became a dean at Hampton Institute, a predominantly black college in Virginia. It was there that she discovered Dorothy Maynor, and thanks to Harriot's relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the soprano had a private audition with the BSO's conductor in 1939. Maynor became one of the country's most prominent concert singers, and founded the Harlem School of the Arts. Few knew she owed her start to Harriot Curtis.
"For women of that era, they were quite amazing," said Lee Herter, who also came to know Margaret Curtis as a young Essex member. "But they were very down-to-earth, normal people."
Neither married, and both lived at the family estate in Manchester until their deaths. Margaret died in 1965, on Christmas, at age 82, discovered in her bed by Harriot, who would pass away nine years later, at 93.
Their involvement with women's golf dates to the earliest years of the sport being played in the United States, and their contributions to the game will live on through the matches, which they had big dreams for. The inscription on the cup reads: "To stimulate friendly rivalry among the women golfers of many lands."
Because of the Curtis sisters, 16 young women will gather in Massachusetts next week, putting on hold promising professional careers for one final opportunity to play strictly for the love of the game. It's a flame that never failed to flicker in the hearts of Margaret and Harriot Curtis, who complemented their heroics on the course with inspirational actions away from it.
"I just love the fact that we have all this history, and we have the future colliding. Our Curtis sisters and the Curtis Cup, with the best young women in the world, coming to play here," said Anne Barton, an Essex member who is chairing next week's three-day tournament, which starts Friday. "We've always known who the Curtis sisters were at this club, but I don't think anyone had a true appreciation for what they did for golf, and for outside golf. That's what fascinates me."
