Abraham (or Abram or Abe) Van Santvoord Curry (February 19, 1815 October 19, 1873) is considered the founding father of Carson City, Nevada. A native of the state of New York, he traveled to the West Coast during the California Gold Rush and settled in Nevada's Eagle Valley, where Carson City was established. Curry served as an assemblyman of the Nevada Territorial Legislature from 1862 to 1863 and was a territorial senator from 1863 to 1864. He was also the first superintendent of the Carson City Mint and the first warden of Nevada State Prison. Curry donated of land for the site of the Nevada State Capitol, for which the state prison quarry provided the stone for its construction. Curry spent the final years of his life building facilities for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad in Carson City. Though he had achieved prominence in Nevada, his wife claimed that he had only one dollar in his pocket when he died in 1873. Biography Abraham Van Santvoord Curry was born on February 19, 1815, in the hamlet of South Trenton, New York. He was the first son of Campbell Curry and Elvira Skinner Curry, who were married in South Trenton. On August 1, 1835, Curry married Mary Ann Cowen, who was then eighteen years old, in Ogdensburg, New York. Their first child and only son, Charles A. Curry, was born on June 10, 1836. After a year in Ogdensburg, the family moved several times and settled in Portage, Ohio, in 1848. The Currys later had six daughters. By 1852, Curry was working in Cleveland, Ohio, as a commercial merchant and later became an agent for the Michigan Southern Railroad. Travel to the West After his daughters, Elvira and Jane, were each married, Curry and his son Charles took a steamship from New York City that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco between 1854 and 1855. In 1856, the two were in the mining town of Red Dog, where Curry opened a bowling alley and established the first branch "tribe" of the Improved Order of Red Men in California. He met future business partners Benjamin F. Green, John J. Musser, and Francis "Frank" Marion Proctor in the nearby town of Downieville. Settlement in Nevada In 1858, Curry traveled by stagecoach with Green, Musser, and Proctor, from California to the town of Genoa after news had spread that the western part of