Abraham Van Santvoord Curry (February 19, 1815 – October 19, 1873) was an American politician considered the founding father of Carson City, Nevada. A native of the state of New York, he traveled to the West Coast during the California Gold Rush and settled in Nevada's Eagle Valley, where Carson City was established.

Curry served as an assemblyman of the Nevada Territorial Legislature from 1862 to 1863 and was a territorial senator from 1863 to 1864. He was also the first superintendent of the Carson City Mint and the first warden of Nevada State Prison. Curry donated 10 acres (4.0 ha) of land for the site of the Nevada State Capitol, for which the state prison quarry provided the stone for its construction.

Curry spent the final years of his life building facilities for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad in Carson City. Though he had achieved prominence in Nevada, his wife claimed that he had only one dollar in his pocket when he died in 1873.

Abraham Van Santvoord Curry was born on February 19, 1815, in the hamlet of South Trenton, New York. He was the first son of Campbell Curry and Elvira Skinner Curry, who were married in South Trenton. On August 1, 1835, Curry married Mary Ann Cowen, who was then eighteen years old, in Ogdensburg, New York. Their first child and only son, Charles A. Curry, was born on June 10, 1836. After a year in Ogdensburg, the family moved several times and settled in Portage, Ohio, in 1848. The Currys later had six daughters. By 1852, Curry was working in Cleveland, Ohio, as a commercial merchant and later became an agent for the Michigan Southern Railroad.

After his daughters, Elvira and Jane, were each married, Curry and his son Charles took a steamship from New York City that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco between 1854 and 1855. In 1856, the two were in the mining town of Red Dog, where Curry opened a bowling alley and established the first branch "tribe" of the Improved Order of Red Men in California. He met future business partners Benjamin F. Green, John J. Musser, and Francis "Frank" Marion Proctor in the nearby town of Downieville.

In 1858, Curry traveled by stagecoach with Green, Musser, and Proctor, from California to the town of Genoa after news had spread that the western part of Utah Territory had been abandoned by Mormon settlers returning to Salt Lake City because of the Utah War. Curry's $1000 offer to buy a corner lot on which to build a store in Genoa was refused for being insufficient. After finding real estate in Genoa to be expensive, Curry moved on to the more sparsely inhabited Eagle Valley.

Curry partnered with Musser and Proctor to purchase the Eagle Ranch trading post and 865 acres of the surrounding valley for a down payment of $300 in coins out of a total sale price of $1,000. Musser and Proctor, who were both attorneys, worked to carve a separate territory from Utah, while Curry promoted the newly founded Carson City. Curry set aside and donated 10 acres (4.0 ha) of land for the site of the Nevada State Capitol.

In July 1859, Musser became president and Proctor became vice-president of the constitutional convention to establish the Territory of Nevada. Curry served as the delegate from Eagle Valley. In 1859, the discovery of the Comstock Lode east of Carson City was made public, bringing tens of thousands of miners into the area. In 1861, Curry built a 100-foot stone hotel on top of warm springs about two miles east of the city center. A large wooden eagle was placed on the top of the hotel.