Moss Family History: Julius Moss, 1830 - 1922
Born June 25, 1830 in Cheshire, I remember him quite well from a visit I had to Cheshire in the summer of 1918, I think, when I was eleven. He seemed to be such a gentle, kindly man. He had two places to sit. One by the woodburning stove in the kitchen in the plant window corner and the other was by the tall black stove in the front room. His chairs were the good, comfortable, old-fashioned type, covered with material that looked like carpet to me. Aunt Bertha took the most wonderful care of him imaginable. He found that his eyes got better about the time I knew him, and he didn't wear glasses anymore. He enjoyed reading "The Youth's Companion" which, by the way, was far better reading material than most of the juvenile literature these days. He caused some concern one day when he wasn't in his usual places. When he was finally located he had climbed the ladder up to the top of the hay mow in the barn just to see if the hay was keeping well that season. It took a lot of fussing to get him safely down again. He liked to tell stories of the early days that he remembered and I wish that I could have written some down.
He worked in the hub factory as a young man and farmed the acreage at Moss Farms which, of course, included the Rock Lot. Much of the farm's produce was sold in Waterbury directly to the consumers. He told me of standing in the door of the hub factory one rainy day and shooting a rifle across the river below the dam spillway. The bullet must have struck a rock and ricocheted in such a way that it came back and went through a window in the second floor above his head. He also told me of the time he left the farm briefly during the Civil War to take some goodies down to his brother who was then stationed in Pennsylvania.