Roswell Otis Curtiss was a son of Samuel and Mary Hatch Curtiss. He came to Downers Grove with his family in 1836. He worked in the tavern his father owned until 1857 when it burned down. Next he worked at a general store in Wheaton. After that he worked in Chicago but was back on the family farm by 1877. In 1890 he bought a house on Maple Avenue at the time when the first sidewalk was laid.
Buried with him are his wife Cordelia Lyman Curtiss, whom he married in 1855, and their three year-old son Willie.
