8685 W. Grange Ave., Greendale, Milwaukee County

Born in Detroit of Irish immigrant parents, Curtin came to Milwaukee in 1837 to join his mother's family, the Furlongs, and settle on a farm in Greenfield. In the 1840s the Curtins moved into this typically Irish stone house described in Curtin's Memoirs. After his father's death, Jeremiah persevered in his love for learning and languages and graduated from Harvard College in 1863. His command of Russian won him a position in the U.S. legation in St. Petersburg in 1864, thus launching his forty-year worldwide career as linguist, translator (Sienkeiwicz's Quo Vadis), ethnologist, folklorist, and diplomat. He died and was buried at his wife's Vermont home in Bristol.

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[Source: McBride, Sarah Davis. History Just Ahead (Madison:WHS, 1999).]