[2] Her father having been a Methoidist minister, she made her living lecturing as a pulpit orator on the topics of prohibition and woman suffrage on behalf of the National WCTU, Chautauqua, and the lyceum circuits.

Atticus Webb, in The Union Signal for April 8, 1920, related that Curtis' father, a prosperous merchant, included a large number of barrels of liquor in his stock, and that one day, during her father's absence, Curtis turned on the faucets of all the casks in the cellar, and allowed the contents to run to waste.

Coming info the world during that period when the South was struggling back from the devastation of civil war, Curtis was early inured to the lessons of effort, which developed in her a never-dying determination to contend for the right against the wrong regardless of popularity or public opinion.

[2] From this place, in 1900, she was called to the platform as State Organizer of the Texas Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

[6] Curtis also served as National vice-president, WCTU, as well as State superintendent of temperance in the International Sunday-School Association for Texas.

[2] She was a member of the International Lyceum Association, lecturing on "Woman, Her Progress and Future" and "The Country's Greatest Need".

She occupied many places of honor by appointment as recognition of her ability and her work for social, political and moral reforms.

[7][6] When Oklahoma was preparing itself for Statehood, Curtis was invited to address its constitutional convention on the subject of Statewide prohibition of the liquor traffic, and as a result of her address before that body, Statewide prohibition was written into the Constitution of that State.

[6] As a young woman, Curtis wrote and read temperance essays and pushed local campaigns in the schools of Mississippi.

[10] Nannie Curtis died at the home of her son, Roy, in Dallas, Texas, March 29, 1920, after a lingering illness of three months.

[5] On June 15, 1920, the Texas Senate, by a rising vote, adopted a resolution giving its "expression of appreciation and loss by reason of the death of this noble woman".