Moss Family History: Walter Herbert Moss, continued
So in the early part of 1917 we moved again to Germantown, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., and Father became manager on a peach orchard for a wealthy Washington-based man name A.H. Baker. In September, 1919, we moved again to Cinnaminson, New Jersey and Father became foreman on a fruit farm for a Quaker named William Parry.
In September 1920 we made a temporary move to Cheshire, Connecticut. Then on January 1, 1921, we moved to Naranja, Florida, where father was foreman of a citrus grove. In June of the same year we were back in Cheshire, Conn., because Mother could not live in the semi-tropical climate of the region. Malaria that she had first contracted in Virginia came back on her so badly that she felt she could not live there very long. So starting in June, 1921, we combined living on the Peters Farm together with my maternal grandmother and Mother's brother, Tom. The next move came in the spring of 1923 when father took the job of superintendent of a peach orchard in Durham, Connecticut, owned by the Barnes Nursery of Yalesville. The family lived there until 1947 when the orchard was discontinued and the property sold. By this time only Mother and Father were left at home and they moved directly across the Middletown road from the orchard to a piece of property very providently acquired sometime before by son John. This was to be their last move and Dad built a home there and established a small plant and tree nursery that kept him very pleasantly occupied for the rest of his life. He helped out the war effort by working for Pratt and Witney (aircraft engines) until he was 65, - the company compulsory retirement age. Also he served a term in the Connecticut Legislature as his father and grandfather had done before him.
Mother died in 1966 in Torrington, Connecticut, where she was staying during her last illness with daughter Virginia and son-in-law, Everett Wood. After Mother died, father tried to live on in Durham alone but it was very hard for him and he began spending more and more time with son John in Branford until finally John and daughter-in-law Carol made a permanent place for him in their home and he spent the remainder of his life very happily surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
Father died in 1971 in Branford, Connecticut. Both he and Mother are buried in Cheshire and their stone is in Saint Peter's Church Cemetery.