More Mosleys but in Philly…

For the longest time, I’ve had George H. Mosley (b. 1799, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; d. 12 Feb 1872, Troy, Doniphan, Kansas), his wife Letitia Parsons (b. 28 Feb 1802, Philadelphia; d. 8 July 1850, Philadelphia) as the end of the Mosley line in my database.  I haven’t gone farther back yet (maybe there’ll be something once more of the 1812 pension files are online), but I found out a little bit more about them this week.

First, here’s what I knew about the family, most of which I got from an SAR application last summer: Parents George H. Mosley and Letitia Parsons (details above) were married in Philadelphia on 23 May 1822.  Letitia was the ninth and final child of Abraham Parsons (b. 5 March 1758, Philadelphia; d. 26 Aug 1822) and Leonora Ryder (b. 18 April 1762, Graves End, Long Island, New York; d. 7 Dec 1855, Philadelphia); Abraham and Leonora were married in 1782 in Graves End.  George and Letitia were parents of two children that I knew of:

• Richard Washington Mosley – M; b. 22 Feb 1834, Philadelphia; m. to Lucinda M. Clark, 8 Jan 1884, Denver, Arapahoe, Colorado; d. 22 Jan 1942.
• Andrew Jackson Mosley – M; b. 15 March 1836, Philadelphia; m. to Minerva Rose Stevens, 20 Sep 1858, Sumner, Kansas; d. 27 Feb 1914, Pittman, Gloucester, New Jersey.

So I started searching again with “Letitia Mosley” as the search term (note: always search for women by both maiden and married names).  The first record that appeared was about her death:

I had her death date from the SAR application, so this document for me was a primary source confirmation of that record.  But it gave me another bit of information that would come in handy with a few other records, as we’ll see soon.  The next record in the search results also proved relevant:

It always seemed a bit odd that in the 1830s this family only had two children, especially when the mother lived for another fifteen years.  So finding this record was a wonderful bonus.  Now I had a third child for the family who lived to adulthood (and now I have to find his marriage record, probably also in Philadelphia).  The younger George was 45 when he died in 1872, which would put his birth right around 1827, five years after his parents’ marriage and seven years before the birth of Richard W. Mosley as noted above.  Now, wouldn’t it be wild if the attending physician, M. M. Beach, was related to my own Beach line?

A quick look at FindAGrave for Mount Moriah Cemetery shows it as a big place with 12,655 interments.  It also notes that a database of interments at that cemetery is on the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania’s website; I’ll investigate that later, and the next time we’re in Philadelphia, we’ll have to make a stop there.

I didn’t see too many more relevant records for Letitia Mosley at FamilySearch, so I changed my search to “George H. Mosley” and tried again.  Since I had found one more child in the family, now I was looking for others.  There were three more that seem pretty likely to be members of this family.  In birth order, they were:

a son born circa December 1838, died 12 April 1839,

another son born circa September 1842, died 5 November 1842,

and a third son, Abraham, born circa 1845, died 11 Dec 1848.  All three of these death certificates were signed by Franklin Bache, M.D., the same doctor who certified Letitia’s death.  Now to be fair, Philadelphia was a much smaller city in the 1830s and 1840s, and the search results I got also have records for an African-American family that shared this surname in the area at the same time, so there is still some question as to whether these three children really do belong in this family.  However, the calculated birth dates are all plausible for this family, and since all of them were attended by the same physician, I can believe that they belong here and will continue to research them to try to further prove their connection.

There was one last relevant record that appeared in the search results for George Mosley.  The SAR application said that he died in Troy, Doniphan, Kansas, in 1872.  Now I have further confirmation that he was there:

Here he is in the 1870 U.S. census in Troy, Kansas, with a woman named Ann E. Mosley (b. circa 1816, Pennsylvania).  Yeah, the census enumerator wrote “Mosely” and not “Mosley,” but the evidence so far makes me believe that this was a misspelling.  It seems likely that Ann would have been a subsequent marriage for George after Letitia’s death in 1850.  Maybe George felt that Philadelphia was proving to be too dangerous for his family after three children and his wife died there.  The death record above shows that the younger George H. Mosley died in Philadelphia, but Richard moved to Colorado and is found in records there by 1880, and Andrew moved to Kansas where he married Minerva in 1858; Andrew and Minerva moved back to Philadelphia and eventually to New Jersey.  Was the elder George following Andrew westward to get away from something in Philadelphia?  I don’t know yet, but it’s interesting that the younger George H., a carpenter, died in January 1872 in Philadelphia and then the elder George H., who was also a carpenter, died two weeks later in February 1872 in Kansas (cue the Twilight Zone music).

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Sources:

• 1870 U.S. census, Doniphan County, Kansas, population schedule, Troy, page 12, dwelling 71, family 77, George H. Mosley household; digital images, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 21 April 2012).
• 1900 U.S. census, Arapahoe County, Colorado, population schedule, Precinct 4, Denver, enumeration district (ED) 59, sheet 7-A, dwelling 144, family 152, Richard W. Mosley household; digital images, Heritage Quest (http://persi.heritagequest.com : accessed 26 February 2012).
• Colorado, Statewide Marriage Index, 1900-1939, number 2243, Richard W. Mosley and Lucinda M. Clark marriage, 8 January 1884; index and digital images, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 21 April 2012); Division of Vital Statistics, Department of Health. Colorado State Archives, Denver, Colorado.
• Compiled genealogy by Jennifer Lamb.
• National Society Sons of the American Revolution , "membership applications 1889-1970," database, Ancestry (http://ancestry.com, accessed 2 July 2011), application of Earl Louis Mosley.
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915, <page number not specified>, Abraham Mosley death, 11 December 1848; digital images, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 21 April 2012).
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915, <page number not given>, George H. Mosley death, 25 January 1872; digital images, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 21 April 2012).
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915, <page number not given>, Letitia Mosley death, 8 July 1850; digital images, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 21 April 2012).
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915, <page number not specified>, male infant Mosley death, 12 April 1839; digital images, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 21 April 2012).
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia City Death Certificates, 1803-1915, <page number not specified>, male infant Mosley death, 5 November 1842; digital images, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 21 April 2012).