Later Life
Curtis in 1872 also went into the dredging business. He worked on jobs that were from $50,000 to a half a million dollars. He was successful at this business as well. He later even went into the business of ship building. He opened the Curtis shipyard and built ten large ships. He also owned the controlling interest in the ferry between Portland and South Portland and a line of steamers until 1896. Curtis was even in the silver and coal mining business in Maine. In 1880 Curtis was in the farming business on a grand scale near Gothenburg, Nebraska. Here he owned over 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) where he raised Hereford cattle.
Curtis bought in 1878 the largest and most expensively built house in Deering Center, Maine. During the last months of his life he took an interest in ancient Egypt and the pyramids. His creed was do good.
Read more about this topic: John B. Curtis
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them; he has lived for a long time who has little lived.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)