Los Angeles County
Biographies
EDWARD WALTER MOSES
Since 1925 Edward Walter Moses, lawyer and poet, has been engaged in the practice of law in the city of Los Angeles, California, and during this relatively brief period has risen to prominence at the bar. He has also achieved distinction as a poet of recognized merit, and his verse, written largely in his leisure hours, has firmly established his reputation as a literary figure and won him national honors.
He is descended from a distinguished lineage of colonial interest. The records of his ancestors are best set forth in the following letter written by Mr. Moses to his, Lincoln Ellsworth Moses II.
“Los Angeles, California,
October 9, 1933.
“Mr. Lincoln Moses II,
(Grandson of Lincoln Ellsworth Moses)
Midland Ranch School for Boys,
Los Olivos, California.
“Dear Linn:
The following is a brief sketch of your ancestry on my side:
“Taking first the Moses lines you go back in direct line person by person to John Moses, who we know was a shipwright at Plymouth, Mass., prior to 1632. Evidently he came from Wales. His anvil was on exhibition at the Philadelphia Centennial. We do not know the date he died or the date he was born.
“His son, John Moses II, moved to Windsor, Conn. He was a soldier of Captain John Mason’s Troop of Horse. He married Mary Brown May 18, 1653, and died October 14, 1683. He had many sons, as practically all of your various great-grandfathers did, and some of them married more than once, but I am giving you only those who are in your direct line of descent.
“John Moses III was born June 15, 1654, married Deborah Thrall, and died on August 31, 1714.
“His son, John Moses IV, was born April 26, 1681, married Sarah Tuller on June 14, 1705, and died sometime in 1759.
“His son, Benoni Moses, was on the Lexington Alarm list and was a soldier in the Revolutionary armies. You are thus descended directly from a soldier in the Revolutionary armies. I understand he was a sergeant. He was born sometime in 1711. You are descended from his second wife, Susannah Humphrey, whom he married on June 5, 1740. Benoni died in 1787. His brother, Timothy, was a lieutenant in the Revolutionary armies.
“Benoni’s son, Elnathan Moses, was born February 28, 1743. He moved from Connecticut to West Rutland, Vermont. He married a French lady by the name of Elizabeth, who lived to 96 years old. Elnathan died about 1827.
“His son, Rufus Moses (the red head), was born in 1775, married Lydia Ramsdale, moved from Connecticut to Vermont, thence to Ticonderoga, thence to Dayton, N. Y., and thence, about 1847, to French Creek, N. Y. He was buried at Clymer, N. Y. (Clymer is one of the towns that your grandfather, Lincoln Ellsworth Moses, knew in his boyhood and is also the town from which your distant cousin, Clementina, comes. She is the cousin who lives with your cousin Alice Moses, daughter of your Uncle Clayton at Great Bend, Kansas.) Rufus Moses died April 23, 1853.
“His son, Hiram Moses, your great-great-grandfather, was born September 3, 1798. He moved from Ticonderoga back to West Haven, Vermont, in 1839, then he moved to French Creek, N. Y., in 1843. (Remember that at this time New York was the frontier). In 1866 he moved to Wayne, Pa., and thence to Clymer, N. Y., in 1871, where he was a deacon in the Congregational Church. It is thru Hiram’s wife that you are descended by direct line from an officer in the Revolutionary armies. He married Betsey Campbell on April 9, 1821. She was the daughter of Captain John Campbell, an officer in the Revolutionary army.
“One of his sons, Amasa Cassius Moses, who was born April 12, 1848, was your great-grandfather. He married Naomi A. Terry, whom I have heard your grandfather say was partly Scotch and partly Irish. Amasa was a country professor in the frontier of N. Y. and Penn. He was a very cultured, charming man of great personal magnetism. He made a fortune in tanning. Then his partner, I understand, thru treachery ruined him and he did not do anything about it. Instead, he followed the family custom of moving to the frontier, and in the fall of 1871 he moved to central Kansas with his wife and seven boys, one of them being your grandfather, Lincoln Ellsworth Moses. I understand that your great-grandfather Amasa, and your great-uncle, Arthur Moses, brother of your grandfather Lincoln, journeyed out on horseback first before moving out there. Then they came back and moved the family by ox-team.
“When the family arrived in central Kansas the pampas grass which covered the plains in early days had not yet been plowed under. Once plowed under it never grew back. The pampas grass was 12 to 15 feet high and your grandfather told me that when he was a your man he and his brother sat on horseback, stood in their stirrups on top of the hill, and could barely see over the top of the grass, and from there watched the engineers push the railhead of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railway across the plains.
“Amasa Moses was the first white settler in central Kansas. After he had settled there others came, and soon the town of Great Bend grew up. It became a stopping point on the route of the cattle drive from north to south. In those days the great herds of cattle would be driven over the unfenced plains which belonged to no man, being driven north in the spring and south in the fall. Great Bend was a wild town in those days. Your great-grandmother, Naomi, had very little good company. There were 122 women in Great Bend at one time, I understand, and of those only seven were such that she cared to associate with them.
“Your grandfather, when a boy of five to eight years old, remembered dodging around the corners of the rude store building while the cowboys ‘shot it out’ on the main street. Amasa Moses ran a general store in which your grandfather and his brothers acted as clerks, even when they were very small, and the clerks in this store used to go to bed at night with barrels around them to protect them from stray bullets.
“Comforts were almost unknown. Your great-grandparents and family lived in a rough log house which they built themselves and which stood until it was taken down by a hurricane in 1915. It was called ‘The Old Moses Homestead’ and was a few miles outside of Great Bend. The winters were so cold and the summers so hot that the people had to be very tough to live at all in those days, and if a weakling baby was born into a family it did not generally survive. Doctors were very few and far between, and not well educated although heroic and devoted. Your grandfather told, for instance, that when his hands broke open from the cold, all that could be done was to rub some mutton tallow into them, which your great-grandmother, Naomi, boiled out of sheep fat. He also told that when he was only about four years old he used to lead the horses at the head of the plow while one of the older brothers would hold the handles of the plow. He said that during their noon hour for lunch they would rest by picking potato bugs. Water for baths had to be hauled from the creek and heated on the stove, if they wanted a hot bath. Amasa Moses used to break the ice on the creek in winter to take his bath and finally died from an acute attack of rheumatism in consequence.
“Your grandfather and some of his brothers kept following the frontier westward and eventually got into the mines in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and even down into Old Mexico. They were well-known figures in the rough life of the southwest in early days. An instance is here given: When your mother, you and I came out to Los Angeles by auto we topped at the De Vargas Hotel in Santa Fe, N. M., and when I signed the register the tall, grizzled, white-haired, weatherbeaten man back of the desk said, ‘Moses—you don’t happen to be related to the Moses of Great Bend, do you,—Linn , Will and Ed?’ I said ‘Yes, I am rather closely related, I am Linn’s son, and the rest of them are my uncles.’ He smiled, shook my hand warmly and said, “Oh! those Moses boys! Hot sports!’ But he would tell me no more, much to my regret. Your great uncles Will and Sew and Cash, were associated with your grandfather in mining ventures, grocery and real estate business, and politics, in and around Pueblo, Colo.
“Your first cousin once removed, Clyda Moses, now dead, married Alva Adams, son of Alva Adams, once governor of Colorado. I used to go over to see our neighbor, Governor Adams, when I was a boy. He had an enormous library and he and I would eat bread and butter and sugar and he would tell me about the books, and he helped to shape my young mind, and to give me a thirst for knowledge.
“The Moses family is very well remembered among the old timers of Pueblo. Your great uncles Ed and Clayton stayed at Great Bend and became powerful figures in the business and political life of central Kansas. Their brother, Arthur, moved to the Pacific Coast and spent the rest of his life in Seattle.
“Your grandmother, Gertrude Moses, has an ancestry going back to English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch, and some very interesting discoveries she has made in tracing her descent show that from this side you are also descended from some of the earliest settlers of this country, and Welsh and English gentry.
“There are a number of very brilliant relatives on the Moses side, officers high in the navy, writers, statesmen. Sen. George Moses is a distant relative. From both the Moses and Tucker lines you are descended from honest, industrious, religious people who have always occupied respected positions in the communities and have been fairly well to do. * * * On the Moses side we have a coat of arms and are descended from small landed gentry in Wales. * * * A son of a Reverend John Moses, who came from Wales in 1840, told me of a trunkful of papers from the family dating back to 1300 found at an ancient church at Tradigger. The Moses family of Monmouthshire and Wales is more than 600 years old. Many of the name were large and strong. Strong physiques, iron constitutions, courage, considerable will power, rather free and easy and good humored natures unless crossed, obstinate, * * * stubborn, love of the land and a liking for the simple things, and an urge to seek new surroundings, new people, new conditions, a love of adventure and hardships, and a pioneering spirit come down to you from your Moses ancestry. You also inherit from your Welsh ancestry a religious trend, a tendency towards mysticism and metaphysical philosophy, which, if indulged in too much sometimes leads members of our family to lose contact with realities. You also inherit a strain of poetical appreciation of beauty, particularly of nature, coupled with the possibility of mental brilliance and shrewd practical common sense. In other words you have such a wealth of conflicting and opposing tendencies from your inheritance that you can make out of yourself about anything you wish as all the materials are within you.”
Edward Walter Moses, son of Lincoln Ellsworth and Gertrude (Tucker) Moses, was born in Pueblo, Colorado, June 8, 1894. He was educated at Harvard University, which he attended from 1911 to 1913, and at the University of Wisconsin, from which he was graduated in 1915 with the B. A. degree. Subsequently he studied law at the University of Southern California, where he took the degree of Juris Doctor in 1925. He began his active career in 1916 and for a year was engaged in mining enterprises in the west. When the United States entered the World war he enlisted in the army and served as a first lieutenant of infantry until the signing of the armistice. From 1919 to 1923 he was associated with his father in the Kansas Flour Mills Company, but in the latter year settled in Los Angeles and in 1925 began the independent practice of law. Since that time he has specialized in financial, corporation and realty law, building up a substantial practice.
In spite of his professional duties, Mr. Moses has found time to cultivate his unusual gifts as a poet. He began to write verse at an early age and with all the varied activities of his life he has continued to do so, although often under difficulties. All of this he put aside for polishing and perfection until he could be happy in releasing it for publication. His production has naturally not been large as yet but his talent has steadily ripened and matured and the recent publication of some of his work has attracted wide attention. In 1933 his poem, “To One Who Changed,” won first prize in the Modern American Poetry competition conducted by the Galleon Press and with this award he took his place among the most promising poets of the day. In 1934 his volume, “Drums and Violins,” containing many of his poems has been published, offering an opportunity of larger scope for the appraisal of his work. His poems are remarkable for their power and their sustained strength, coupled with the most haunting beauty and music of diction and rhythm. The range of his interests, his grasp, and the depth of his feeling distinguish his work and accord him a distinct place of his own.
In an interview shortly after the publication of his prize poem, Mr. Moses discussed his writings and their relation to his life. The following impressions of the interviewer may be quoted:
“Mr. Moses is not the layman’s conception of a poet. Long hair and flowing ties play no part in his makeup. He is a ‘youngish’ man of large and athletic build with a humorous twist to his mouth and a sensitive look in his eyes. He is a lover of life, senses its richness, and sometimes manages to get a bit of it down on paper. It is his desire to crystallize his reactions to life and its vagaries that leads him to write the poetry which has brought him national acclaim.
“Something impresses him. He sits down and writes as nearly as he can the sensations that the experience stimulated in him. Part of it comes pretty easily—maybe all, but if it doesn’t there is no tearing of hair. He works with it calmly, and if, after a while, his thoughts still fail to align themselves into poetical meter, he sets it aside and comes back to it later. Mechanical aids like the thesaurus and rhyming dictionary, he feels, destroy the evolution of thought. ‘The poem as it is written,’ he said, ‘goes through a metamorphosis, growing into something allied to but frequently quite different from the original idea of conception. It seems to me a process of evolution.’
“Life has been pretty varied for him. He has been a soldier, a farmer, a miner and a salesman in addition to being a lawyer. But in all of these occupations he has taken time to feel and to sense life as he goes through it. He has written poems about the war, philosophy, nature and many other subjects, but they are all expressed in their relation to people and they all refer back to the great reservoir of general human experience. . . . .”
Mr. Moses is active socially in Los Angeles and is a member of the Breakfast Club, and the Athletic Club in this city. He holds the rank of captain in the Officers’ Infantry Reserve, is a republican in politics and a Mason. He is a life member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, holds a Pilgrim Tercentenary Membership which descends in perpetuity, and he belongs to the Sons of the American Revolution. He is affiliated with the Chi Phi, Phi Delta Phi, Phi Kappa Phi and Delta Rho fraternities. He is also a member of the honorary scholastic society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the honorary legal fraternity, Order of the Coif.
On June 8, 1920, Edward Walter Moses married, at Hollywood, California, Virginia Holmes, from whom he was divorced in 1931. They became the parents of three children: Lincoln Ellsworth II, Marilyn, and Keith Holmes.
Transcribed by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: California
of the South Vol. V, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages
318-325, Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 Joyce Rugeroni.
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