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Captain Alfred Huger Moses, C. S. A.

Captain Alfred Huger Moses, C. S. A.[1, 2]

Male 1840 - 1918  (77 years)

Personal Information    |    Notes    |    Sources    |    All    |    PDF

  • Name Alfred Huger Moses  [1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14] 
    Prefix Captain 
    Suffix C. S. A. 
    Born 16 Sep 1840  Charleston, SC Find all individuals with events at this location  [3, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 16, 17] 
    Gender Male 
    Alt. Birth 1841  [18] 
    Census 15 Nov 1850  Parishes of St. Philip & St. Michaels, Charleston, SC Find all individuals with events at this location  [19] 
    1850 US 
    Residence 1860  [18] 
    • District 1, Montgomery, Alabama
    Occupation 1861  Montgomery, Montgomery, AL Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Appointed Clerk of the Confederate District Court in Montgomery 
    Census 9 Aug 1870  Montgomery, Montgomery, AL Find all individuals with events at this location  [7] 
    1870 US 
    • age 29, commision merchant
    Census 7 Jun 1880  Montgomery, Montgomery, AL Find all individuals with events at this location  [15] 
    1880 US 
    • "Real Estate Agent"
    Residence 7 Jun 1880  Montgomery, Montgomery, AL Find all individuals with events at this location  [15] 
    4th Ward, District 4 
    Residence 1883  Montgomery, Montgomery, AL Find all individuals with events at this location  [20] 
    640 South Perry Street 
    Census 23 Apr 1910  St. Louis, St. Louis, MO Find all individuals with events at this location  [8] 
    1910 US 
    Reference Number 445 
    Residence 23 Apr 1910  St. Louis, St. Louis, MO Find all individuals with events at this location  [8] 
    Ward 23 
    Died 24 May 1918  Saint Louis, Saint Louis, MO Find all individuals with events at this location  [1, 3, 10, 21, 22, 23, 24] 
    Buried Montgomery, Montgomery, AL Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Person ID I445  aojd
    Last Modified 11 Nov 2011 

    Mother Adeline Lyon Moses,   b. 23 Oct 1809, Charleston, South Carolina Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 19 Nov 1873, Montgomery, Montgomery, AL Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 64 years) 
    Family ID F213  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Notes 
    • FROM AJHS Website Alfred Huger Moses, Industrial Visionary From the first Sephardic settlers in North America who engaged in ship pi ng and overseas trade, to retailing geniuses like the Straus and Rosen wa ld families, America's Jewish entrepreneurs have been associated with t ra de and commerce. Some, however, have dreamed of founding great indust ri al cities. One such dreamer was Alfred Huger Moses (1840-1918), the oldest son a nd o ne of nine children born in Charleston, SC to Levy and Adeline Mose s. In t he 18th and early 19th centuries, Charleston had been a major cent er of Am erican Jewish life and many of its leading retailers and merchan ts were Je wish. However, Charleston's slave-owning planter aristocracy lo oked do wn on those "in trade." A non-Jewish commentator wrote in 181 8, "I shou ld think my own father an accomplished knave if he had at any t ime made mo ney in the dry-goods line in King Street [Charleston's commerc ial thorough fare]. They are all Jews and worse than Jews— Yankees, for a Y ankee can J ew a Jew directly." Alfred Moses had higher ambitions than to remain in an atmosphere unfavo ra ble to Jews and commercial enterprise. In 1860, at age twenty, after gr adu ating from the College of Charleston, Alfred moved to Montgomery, Alab am a, a city that balanced its traditional cotton economy with commerce a nd m anufacturing. Moses apprenticed in a local law office. When the Civ il W ar erupted in April, 1861 he became the clerk of the Confederate Dist ri ct Court in Montgomery and a member of the Alabama Rebels, a civil def en se volunteer militia company. During the war, Alfred's brothers Mordecai and Henry joined him in Montg om ery. When hostilities ended, the three brothers entered the city's hea vi ly depressed real estate market. By the 1870s, the brothers develop ed o ne of Montgomery's leading real estate investment firms. In 1875, Mor dec ai Moses was the first Jew elected mayor of Montgomery and later se rv ed as president of the Montgomery Gas and Electric Light Company. In 1 88 7, the brothers financed the Moses Building, Montgomery's first "skyscr ape r." By 1880, coal and iron ore discovered in the northern reaches of the s ta te created an economic boom in the railroad junction town of Birmingha m, w hich grew into a great steel manufacturing city. Alfred Moses envisio ned b uilding a city that would surpass Birmingham. In 1883, Moses tour ed some m ines near Florence, Alabama. Viewing the rolling hills across t he Tenness ee River from Florence, Moses thought he found the ideal spot f or a new ci ty, which he named Sheffield after the great steel producing c ity in Engla nd. Moses and a partner purchased the site and more than 30,000 adjacent a cr es of mineral lands. They incorporated a company, then laid out stree ts a nd invited railroads to lay tracks connecting Sheffield to Birmingha m, Mob ile and Chicago. Moses promised to construct a water system and a r ailro ad link to Florence. An investor announced plans to build a blast fu rna ce that would produce at least 100 tons of pig iron per day. In thr ee da ys in early 1884, Moses sold 75 acres in the proposed town for $350, 00 0, a profit of more than a quarter of a million dollars over the purc ha se price of the land. A few days after the land sale, a number of New York banks failed, inclu di ng two that were financing the rail link to Sheffield. Constructi on on t he line stopped; panicked owners dumped their newly acquired la nd in Sheff ield and the iron foundry investor backed out. Sheffield prope rty became w orthless and Alfred Moses's dream seemed a failure. Yet, Moses possessed the emotional and financial strength to endu re a nd by the end of 1884 he started building houses and grading street s. By 1 885, railroad construction resumed and, in 1886, the first blast f urnace w as operating. In February of 1887, the Alabama and Tennessee Ir on and Co al Company decided to make Sheffield the center of its operatio ns and erec ted three more furnaces. Moses's endurance had borne fruit. St ock in the M oses-controlled Sheffield Land, Iron and Coal Company rose ra pidly. By 1891, however, the enterprise failed permanently, along with the M os es family bank in Montgomery. Alfred Moses had miscalculated the willin gne ss of railroads to link Sheffield with major cities and had overestim at ed the region's iron ore supply. When the market price for iron dropp ed be low $12 per ton, less than the cost for Sheffield's foundries to pro duce a nd deliver it, the town's furnaces were banked and most of its resi dents d eparted. Moses and his family moved to St. Louis and lived there f or anoth er thirty years in greatly reduced circumstances, his dreams dest roy ed by the boom and bust cycle of the Gilded Age. However, all was not lost for the Moses children. Alfred's daughter Ade li ne met Carl M. Loeb, a twenty-year old Jewish metals dealer empl oy ed by a German firm to work in the St. Louis office of their subsidiar y, t he American Metal Company. Adeline and Carl married, and Carl we nt on to f ound the great investment banking firm of Loeb, Rhoads. Sheffield's blast furnaces were reopened in 1901 but went bankrupt a ga in in 1907. Eventually, U.S. Steel bought the furnaces, but closed th em f or good on the eve of the Depression in 1929. Today, Sheffield is a s ma ll industrial city no longer producing iron or steel. Alfred Moses a nd h is wife are buried in Montgomery, Alabama, where he had his greate st succe ss, rather than Sheffield, a city he envisioned, built but then lost.

  • Sources 
    1. [S11] .

    2. [S285] .

    3. [S338] HTTP://WWW.AJHS.ORG/PUBLICATIONS/CHAPTERS/CHAPTER.CFM?DOCUMENTID=191 (Reliability: 3).
      QUAY 3

    4. [S10] TREE #2631 (Reliability: 3).
      QUAY 3 Date of Import: Nov 16, 2003

    5. [S27] (Reliability: 3).
      Online publication - Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1880 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005. 188 0 U .S. Census Index provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints © Copyright 1999 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. All use is subject to the limited use license and ot he r terms and conditions applicable to this site.Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Tenth Census of the United States, 1880. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Recor d s Administration, 1880.T9, 1,454 rolls. Montgomery, Montgomery, Alabama, ED 129, roll T9_26, page 140.1000, image 0281.

    6. [S4] PG. 211 MOSES II (2), 334 - CORRECTTIONS 211 (Reliability: 3).

    7. [S129] MONTGOMERY WARD 6, MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA; ROLL: M593_35; PAGE: 546; IMAGE: 262. (Reliability: 3).

    8. [S9] LOUIS WARD 23, ST LOUIS (INDEPENDENT CITY), MISSOURI; ROLL: T624_821; PAGE: 12B; ENUMERATION DISTRICT: 362; IMAGE: 1257. (Reliability: 3).

    9. [S13] 30 NOVEMBER 1953 ADELINE M. LOEB OBITUARY (Reliability: 3).

    10. [S3] SECTION III CH 10 PG 5 (Reliability: 3).

    11. [S19] DATE: 1906-12-13; "H.C. MOSES IS DEAD" (Reliability: 3).

    12. [S633] DATE: 1906-12-13; "H.C. MOSES IS DEAD" (Reliability: 3).

    13. [S97] PASSPORT APPLICATIONS, JANUARY 2, 1906 - MARCH 31, 1925 (M1490) (Reliability: 3).

    14. [S135] marriage certificate no. # 4524 (1898), Alfred Huger Moses Jr.-Lillie Alexander; Manhattan Marriage Certificates 369. (Reliability: 3).

    15. [S27] YEAR: 1880; CENSUS PLACE: MONTGOMERY, MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA; ROLL: T9_26; FAMILY HISTORY FILM: 1254026; PAGE: 140.1000; ENUMERATION DISTRICT: 129; IMAGE: 0281. (Reliability: 3).

    16. [S14] YEAR: 1930; CENSUS PLACE: LYNN LANE, TULSA, OKLAHOMA; ROLL: 1933; PAGE: 1B; ENUMERATION DISTRICT: 22; IMAGE: 528.0. (Reliability: 3).

    17. [S340] INTERVIEWED ME AT IAJGS 2009 (Reliability: 3).

    18. [S250] (Reliability: 3).
      Online publication - Ancestry.com. 1860 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2004.Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Ce n sus. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1860.M653, 1,438 rolls. District 1, Montgomery, Alabama, post office Montgomery, roll M 65 3_19, page 182, image 183.

    19. [S40] YEAR: 1850; CENSUS PLACE: ST MICHAEL AND ST PHILLIP, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA; ROLL: M432_850; PAGE: 310; IMAGE: 456. (Reliability: 3).

    20. [S300] ALFRED HUGER MOSES - ORIGINAL DATA: MONTGOMERY CITY DIRECTORY, 1883-1884. MONTGOMERY, AL: JOEL DAVIS, 1884 (Reliability: 3).

    21. [S4] PG. 211 MOSES III (2) (Reliability: 3).

    22. [S23] CERTIFICATE #18918 ALFRED HUGHE MOSES 24 MAY 1918, ST. LOUIS CITY (Reliability: 3).

    23. [S19] MORTUARY NOTICE, 25 MAY 1918, PG. 5 ALFRED H. MOSES PASSES AWAY AT HIS HOME IN ST. LOUIS (Reliability: 3).

    24. [S633] MORTUARY NOTICE, 25 MAY 1918, PG. 5 ALFRED H. MOSES PASSES AWAY AT HIS HOME IN ST. LOUIS (Reliability: 3).


 

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