Jeremiah Curtin was an American ethnographer, folklorist, and translator. Curtin had a strong interest in languages and was fluent in numerous. From 1883 until 1891, he worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology as a field researcher, chronicling the practices and mythology of different Native American tribes. He and his wife, Alma Cardell Curtin, traveled widely, gathering ethnological data from the Modocs of the Pacific Northwest to the Buryats of Siberia. They toured Ireland numerous times, including the Aran Islands, and collected folklore in southwest Munster and other Gaelic-speaking regions with the help of translators. Curtin gathered one of the first accurate collections of Irish folklore and was a valuable resource for W. B. Yeats. Curtin was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Irish parents. He grew up on the family farm in what is now Greendale, Wisconsin, and went on to Harvard College, against his parents' intention for him to attend a Catholic college. While there, he studied with folklorist Francis James Child. Curtin graduated from Harvard in 1863. Curtin subsequently relocated to New York, where he studied law and worked for the United States Sanitary Commission, interpreting and teaching German.
