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Moss Family History: Walter Herbert Moss, 1882 - 1971

Walter Herbert Moss

Walter Moss was born March 15, 1882 in Cheshire. He was educated at Cheshire Academy and took a course in animal husbandry at Connecticut State College at Storrs. He majored in the study of poultry and after leaving school went to work on a poultry farm on Fisher's Island which is located in Block Island Sound just off the Connecticut shore close to New London, but nevertheless, belongs to New York State. In 1905 he apparently returned to Cheshire and married Mary Trerise Peters who left Cornwall, England with her family in 1888 when she was seven years old. The Peters family arrived in Canada in March of that year during the great blizzard of 1888. Some of the family who left Cornwall went on to New Zealand, some stayed in Ontario but her immediate family came down to Cheshire where they knew that some other immigrants from Cornwall lived. She attended Cheshire Academy also and taught school in a one-room schoolhouse located among the farms in East Cheshire.

It would appear from the scant knowledge I have that the newly married couple very quickly went off together to manage a chicken ranch on the York River in the State of Virginia. The ranch was part of, and belonged to, a U.S. Marine Corps station called Camp Magruder, Colonel Waller, veteran of the Boxer Rebellion in command. It was here that I (Lloyd) was born on Jan. 1, 1907, and Virginia was born on August 11, 1908. I have many recollections of the place.

In the spring of 1911 Father moved his family to a house on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg. Here Herbert was born on December 24, 1911. This was to be only a temporary residence, so in the early spring of 1912 we moved out of town to a fully equipped farm that Father had bought. On Jan. 16, 1913, Donald was born. By 1915 it was very evident that the farm would never pay. The land was poor and the market was poor and far distant so in that summer everything but household goods were auctioned off and Father moved us by train to a peach orchard in the town of Millstone near Hancock, Maryland where he was a working foreman for the Corporation who owned the business. On October 10, 1916, John was born. This was mountain country and school conditions for growing children were very backward.