William P. Moseley
Virginia politician
William P. Moseley (1819 – August 17, 1890) was a successful businessman and Virginia state legislator during the Reconstruction era. He served in the Virginia Senate from 1869 to 1871.
Early life
Moseley was born enslaved in Virginia in 1819 (possibly 1820) and he worked as a servant and on a freight boat. He became a free man by 1857, before the start of the American Civil War, when he married Martha Catherine Turpin the freed daughter of a neighbouring planter Edwin Turpin, and his enslaved partner, Mary James. Mary's brother, Henry Turpin served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1871 to 1873.
He went on to educate himself and became reportedly, "well educated". After the war they lived in Richmond, Virginia, and he began to acquire land in both Goochland and Fluvanna counties. Together they had many children, with at least seven sons and six daughters by 1880.
In the 1870 census he was listed as owning $250 of real estate as well as $194 of other personal property. Later he went on to purchase the plantation home of his former master as well as five hundred acres of land.
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This entry incorporates text from “William P. Moseley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.