Charles Trick Currelly (January 11, 1876 – April 10, 1957) was a Canadian

clergy Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...

man and

archeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeol ...

, and the first director of the

Royal Ontario Museum The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...

from 1914 to 1946.

Early life

Charles Currelly was born on January 11, 1876, in Exeter, Ontario, the son of John Currelly and Mary Treble. An only child, he attended the local school in Exeter and was known to visit the shops of the blacksmith, tanner, and wheelwright in order to study how different materials were used. He was tutored by Reverend Jasper Wilson in Latin, who also taught him how to shoot. Currelly's high school years at the

Harbord Collegiate Institute Harbord Collegiate Institute (HCI or Harbord) is a public secondary school located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school is located in the Palmerston-Little Italy-Annex neighbourhood, situated on the north side of Harbord Street, bet ...

brought his family to Toronto. During this time, Currelly participated in art lessons and nature studies. After graduating in 1894, he attended the University of Toronto's Victoria College like his father and grandfather. At Victoria College, he took biology and earth science courses in addition to Asian history and Romance languages. He received his B.A. in 1898. After leaving university, Currelly spent two years serving as a lay missionary for the

Methodist Church Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

at Umatilla in northern

Manitoba Manitoba is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population ...

. During this time, he collected information on

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life in early Canada that was exhibited upon his return to Victoria College for postgraduate studies in the theological department. Currelly was awarded his master's degree in 1902.

Archaeology

After completing his master's degree, in the spring of 1902, Currelly and his friend Ned Burwash, the son of Nathaniel Burwash, chancellor of Victoria University, went to England planning to study how

Social gospel The Social Gospel is a social movement within Protestantism that aims to apply Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean en ...

had filtered down to the working classes. However, this plan was disrupted when Currelly stopped at the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

to have some coins identified. After a little

shawabti The ushabti (also called shabti or shawabti, with a number of variant spellings) was a funerary figurine used in ancient Egyptian funerary practices. The Egyptological term is derived from , which replaced earlier , perhaps the nisba of "' ...

figure fell out of his pocket, Currelly was sent to the office of famous Egyptologist,

Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Sir Flinders Petrie, was an English people, English Egyptology, Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. ...

who worked for the

Egypt Exploration Fund The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) is a British non-profit organization founded in 1882 for the purpose of financing and facilitating the exploration of significant archeological sites in Egypt and Sudan, founded by writer Amelia Edwards and coin ...

. Petrie interviewed Currelly about his drawing skills and offered him an assistantship. Soon, Curelly was living in Petrie's home learning how to pack artifacts. Eventually, Currelly was responsible for a dig in Egypt where he discovered the

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty grave, tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere or have been lost. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although t ...

and tomb of

Ahmose I Ahmose I (''Amosis'', ''Aahmes''; meaning "Iah (the Moon) is born") was a pharaoh and founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt in the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. His reign is usually d ...

. Curelly continued to work in Ehnasya,

Lower Egypt Lower Egypt ( ') is the northernmost region of Egypt, which consists of the fertile Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, from El Aiyat, south of modern-day Cairo, and Dahshur. Historically, the Nile River split into sev ...

, and in Sinai under Petrie until 1905, when Petrie left the Egypt Exploration Fund. In 1907, Currelly also left the Fund. While in Egypt, Currelly discovered his talent and love of collecting and began to collect for people in Britain and Canada including Edmund Walker, the father of one of his school friends. After meeting with Walker in 1905, Currelly was appointed official collector for the University of Toronto and later was given the title of curator of Oriental archaeology. Currelly applied himself to the work of collecting, becoming more and more convinced that a good museum must be developed in Toronto

Royal Ontario Museum

In 1906, when Edmund Walker was chairing a commission on the future of the University of Toronto, it was recommended that a museum should be constructed to serve students and the public. Soon planning for the founding of a provincial museum started under Walker's watchful eye. In 1907, Currelly was made curator of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology. During 1911, Currelly started to work in the basement of the first museum building which was still under construction. Finally, in 1914, Currelly became director of the Archaeology Museum. Throughout his life Currelly worked to advance the museum's interests and never stopped looking for acquisitions to augment the collections, leading them to grow enormously through the late 1910s and 1920s. When Currelly finally retired in 1946, the museum renamed the old Armour Court the Currelly Gallery.

Later life and death

Before Currelly died, he wrote an autobiography entitled, ''I Brought the Ages Home.'' This book recounts his adventures, travels, and museum work. During his retirement Currelly lived near

Port Hope, Ontario Port Hope is a municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, about east of Toronto and west of Kingston, Ontario, Kingston. It is at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County, Onta ...

. While in

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

for a winter vacation, Curelly fell ill and was taken the

Johns Hopkins Hospital Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) is the teaching hospital and biomedical research facility of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1889, Johns Hopkins Hospital and its school of medicine are considered to be the foundin ...

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

. The 81-year-old Currelly died on April 10, 1957, at the hospital where he had been receiving treatment since December. On October 7, 1957, an exhibition was held at the museum to commemorate him. The exhibition was marked by the unveiling of a bronze bust of Currelly which was cast in 1957 by the Vandevoorde Art Foundry of Montreal. The original sculpture was created in 1919 by Canadian artist Ulric Stonewall Jackson Dunbar. This bust and a bronze medallion of Currelly can still be viewed today in the museum's Sackler Reading Room.

Publications

Researches in the Sinai
(with Petrie) New York: E.P. Dutton, 1906 *I Brought the Ages Home. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1956

References