Alfred M. Curry
An industry which more than any other has brought a large prosperity to Upland both in the way of population and increased means of supplying their wants, is the Upland Flint Glass Bottle Company. This company established its plant in Upland in the fall of 1911. The superintendent and general manager is Alfred M. Curry, one f the best men in his business who has a particular knowledge of bottle making in all its details, having become a glass blower's apprentice in boyhood, and having proved not only a skill in the trade but also an ability as a director of men. This corporation has its principal offices in Chicago, and the chief officers are Chicago men, as follows: A.M. Foster, president; E.G. Foster, vice president; W.C. Forbes, secretary; E.N. Peterson, treasurer. The Upland plant has been working steadily since it was established, and has a large product, aggregating about six hundred gross bottles every day. The bottles are of many sizes and sorts, and much of the output is of the finer grade required by apothecaries. The plant never stops operations either night or day, and about two hundred men and boys find their means of livelihood at this industry.
Alfred M. Curry has been with the company for a number of years. For six years he was one of the local officials in the company's plant at Mill Grove, Indiana. His practical experience in the glass and bottle making business covers about eighteen years. Mr. Curry was born in Hartford City, about fifty years ago, was reared and educated there, and since 1895 his activities have been chiefly centered at mill Grove, at Mt. Vernon, Ohio, and at Upland. He was assistant superintendent at Mill Grove for the Foster Company.
Mr. Curry is a son of Aaron S. and Eliza (Ewing) Curry. His father, who was born at Columbus, Ohio, in 1823, was married at old Steubenville, in Randolph County, Indiana, to Miss Ewing, who was born near Red Key, Indiana, in 1832. In Randolph County, Aaron Curry followed his trade as a tanner, and a short time before the war located in Hartford City. A few years after the war he gave up the tanning business and moved to his farm at Mill Grove, where he lived until the death of his wife in 1890. After that he spent a number of years at his old home in Columbus, Ohio, and then returned to Indiana and died at the home of his son in 1905. Alfred Curry is one of quite a large family, five sons and one daughter being still living, and all are married, and all are farmers except him.
Mr. Alfred M. Curry was married in Blackford County, Indiana, nearly thirty years ago to Miss Susan Edwards, who was born in Blackford County, Indiana. They are the parents of four children, as follows: Clyde E., a clerk in the office of the Upland Bottle Company, is a graduate of the Marion Normal College and the business college in the same city, and by his marriage to Mazie Bullock has one child, Rodney Earl. Murle who was educated in the Normal College at Marion, spent four terms in teaching, and is now the wife D. D. Zimmerman of Muncie. Maybelle, educated in the Mill Grove High School and at the Normal College, is a teacher of music in Upland.
Mr. Curry's parents were active members of the Methodist Church and he and his own family worship in the same denomination. In politics he is a Republican and fraternally is affiliated with Wabasset Tribe of the Improved Order of Red Men at Mill Grove.
Submitted by: Gina Reasoner