William F. Moss


From History of Tennessee From the Earliest Time to The Present
Goodspeed Publishing Co.
Nashville, TN
1887

Retyped for the page by Eileen McCarey
1999

William F. Moss, farmer and manufacturer of hickory handles, was born in Green County, Ky., in 1838, and is one of eleven children (six dead), born to Benjamin T. and Elizabeth C. (Duke) Moss. The father was born in 1792, in Virginia, and was a soldier in the war of 1812. After the war he came to Kentucky and was married in this State. He died in 1849. The mother was also a native of Virginia, born in 1794, and she too is dead. Our subject was educated in Green and Warren Counties, Ky. He remained at home and worked on the farm until the breaking out of the late civil war, when he enlisted in the Confederate Army, Company L, Duke's regiment, Second Kentucky Cavalry, and remained with Morgan until his capture. When the company broke, our subject swam the Ohio River at Buffington's Island, into West Virginia, made his way to Greenbrier, W. Va., where he took the train for East Tennessee. Here he with others joined the army under Gen. Wheeler's command, and was captured while on a raid with Wheeler through Middle Tennessee. He was taken to Camp Morton, in Indiana, and was held until the spring of 1865. After his release he came back to Warren County, Ky., and worked on the farm for his brother, David J. Moss, for one year when he moved to the farm now owned by Mrs. Ernest Franklin, Sumner County, Tenn. In 1879 he purchased the farm near Bethpage, where he now resides. In 1862 he married Luke A. Allen, a native of Allen County, Ky., born in 1845, and the daughter of Luke P. and Annitta (Perkins) Allen. Nine children were the result of our subject's marriage; William B., Maggie Fletcher, Elizabeth C., Thomas Luke, Jennie H., Annitta, Ulysses Duke, Henry Fisk and Allen Woodson. There were also twin boys who died in infancy. Mr. Moss is a well-to-do farmer, and owns 200 acres of land nearly all of which is in blue-grass. He is Democrat in politics and cast his first presidential vote for John Bell, candidate for the Whig party. He is a member of the I.O.O.F., R. H. Barry Lodge, No. 176, and is also a Good Templar. Mr. and Mrs. Moss and the eldest four children are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.



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