unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...
of
Indiana
Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...
.
The community is part of the
Kokomo, Indiana
Kokomo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Howard County, Indiana, United States. Its population was 60,093 according to the U.S. Census Bureau 2024 estimate. It is the principal city of the Kokomo, Indiana metropolitan area, Kokomo metropol ...
Curtisville was founded by L.B. Colvin just prior to 1859. Colvin built a
sawmill
A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...
on the railroad that traveled through Madison Township and sold as much lumber as possible so he could secure a train station. Around the same time the first retail operations were opened in Curtisville, in a building on the east side of town that was built by A.B. Newman. Lumber remained the primarily economy for the town. Other services in Curtisville included blacksmithing.Pershing, p. 81 /ref>
In 1859, a post office was installed in Curtisville. Jacob Oldacre served as
postmaster
A postmaster is the head of an individual post office, responsible for all postal activities in a specific post office. When a postmaster is responsible for an entire mail distribution organization (usually sponsored by a national government), ...
. The post office ran until it was discontinued in 1951. A
Missionary Baptists
The Missionary Baptist church is a Christian denomination that emerged in the American South during the late 19th century. Missionary Baptists separated from the Southern Baptist Convention due to theological differences. Missionary Baptists ...
congregation was founded in Curtisville in 1860. A church was built in 1861.Pershing, p. 207 /ref> The land was surveyed and divided into a
plat
In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Survey System, Public Lands Surveys to ...
in 1873. As of 1914, 200 people lived in town and the primary economic driver was the Curtisville Tile and Brick Company.