Conflict in death date. Death certificate and family records give his death year as 1911.
George's death certificate

George's biography


When Payson was first settled, there was very little water for irrigation. Wells were dug for culinary purposes, and during the months of July and August, the stock was taken to the mouth of the canyon to water.

Early in the spring of 1861, the people turned out with teams, plows, spades, shovels, wagons, etc., and dug a waste water ditch from the mouth of Peteetneet Canyon west to a natural reservoir. The purpose of the ditch was to prevent damage to the town in the event of high water from melting snow. It also served to hold water for use later in the season on land not hitherto brought under cultivation, known in 1947 as the "Poor Man's Field."

About the year 1865, the Curtis brothers – Lyman, George and Joseph – surveyed the land for a canal from Spanish Fork River to the farmlands of Payson. They had only the crudest instruments of their own make to work with. The first winter the brothers worked alone to build the canal; then interest became more general, and in three years a canal seven miles long, two feet deep, eight feet wide at the bottom and twelve feet wide at the top, was completed. Known as the Salem Canal, it irrigated two thousand acres of land.

Source:
Memories That Live Utah County Centennial History, compiled by Emma N. Huff, assisted by Nettie Brown, Edith B. Jones, Emma C. Beardall, published by Daughters of Utah Pioneers of Utah County 1947, printed by Art City Publishing Co., Springville, Utah. P. 453

George Curtis
Born 27 OCT 1823 at Sylvan Lake, Michigan. He accepted the LDS gospel with the rest of the family. At age 17 he became a member of the "Red Coat Company" of the Nauvoo Legion, where he served for six years. There he became well acquainted with the Prophet Joseph Smith. He also served as one of the guards for Brigham Young when he left Nauvoo and camped on Sugar Creek.
He set out across the plains 5 July 1848 in the Stephan Markham company, arriving in Utah October 1848. In 1849 helped settlers going to Sanpete and drove the first team that entered that valley.
In 1849 Brigham Young called on him to go to Sanpete to establish a settlement, but after a short time he returned on foot to Salt Lake and a little later went to Provo, from which point he made his way to Payson.

He married 30 October 1850 in the Endowment House, in Salt Lake to Emma Whaley, with whom he traveled across the plains. In December 1850 settled and built a home in Payson, there being only four families there before him.
In 1856 he, Lycurgus and David Wilson built a sawmill in Pondtown (later renamed Salem), where they sawed lumber until 1859, when the mill was sold to his brother Lyman Curtis.
On 22 November 1857 George married Mary Openshaw.

When the work on the meeting house in Payson came to a standstill in 1870, George Curtis, Wm. C. McClellin, and George Pickering took over the project and completed it in two years.
With an old harrow and a yoke of oxen George Curtis and John Bellows made the road from Payson to Palmyra and Spanish Fork.
The raids against the polygamists commenced in 1884 and George was among the number of brethren charged. His case came up for trial in 1892. He was taken to Provo, tried the same day, and sentenced to three months in prison, only escaping a fine as well because the judge failed to mention it.
He spent quite some time in the St. George Temple doing temple work.
The Curtis family was one of the first twelve families to locate in Payson. George Curtis was a member of the Quorum of Seventy, was also a high priest and was foremost in all plans and projects for the advancement of public work and the educational and moral development of the community.
Thus his activities brought him into close association with the work of early development and improvement of his district.
He was the father of seventeen children.