Jeremiah Curtin House
Near Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The farmhouse near Greendale, Wisconsin, where Jeremiah Curtin grew up is one of the more quietly remarkable sites along this stretch of Route Forty-One. Curtin, born in Detroit, with sources differing on the exact year, became one of the great language scholars of the nineteenth century, ultimately mastering more than seventy languages and serving as a translator and diplomat for the United States government in Russia. He collected folklore across three continents, recording Native American oral traditions, Celtic myths, and Slavic folk tales at a time when systematic oral history collection was rare.
His translations of the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, including Quo Vadis, introduced Polish literature to English-speaking readers. The Milwaukee County Historical Society preserved his boyhood home as a museum. Curtin died in Vermont in nineteen oh six and is buried there, a world traveler whose boyhood farm still stands here.
