www.sandersgenealogy.net
Gary B. Sanders

Samuel Moses was born about 1753. Though there is some controversy about his year and place of birth, it is well established that he was married and had a family by the 1780s and was living in Anson County, North Carolina. He is probably the same Samuel Moses who first appeared in a court record of Anson in 1773. He was still living in Anson in 1800. There was a Samuel Moses in Burke County, North Carolina in 1810, but apparently no Samuel Moses listed anywhere in 1820, though it is believed Samuel was in Blount County, Tennessee, by 1817. By 1830 he was in Monroe County, Tennessee, where he died in 1833. It is believed this Samuel in Monroe County is the same Samuel Moses who lived in Anson in 1790 and 1800 because Joshua Moses, generally regarded through tradition as being the brother of Samuel, was also enumerated in Anson in both census years. Y-DNA testing has confirmed that both men are from the same Moses line.

There is family tradition that has been passed down among the descendants of both Samuel and Joshua that the two were brothers. The details of the family tradition, however, vary considerably. Among one branch of the Samuel Moses line, for example, there is a tradition that is unique and dramatically at odds with the tradition among the other branches and different from every tradition passed down among the descendants of Samuel’s brother Joshua who died in Whitley County, Kentucky in 1836. This anomalous tradition is that Samuel was a Jewish immigrant from the Rhineland in Germany.

It is my intention to here examine three works that have addressed the genealogy of the Samuel Moses line:

The Moses Family of Big Creek, the family papers of Joshua and Sarah Sample Moses and related families, Monroe County, Tennessee.  By Edith Croft Ward, 1995.

A Little Before…A Little After, the Families of Robert Lee and Sarah Dorcas Hunt Moses, plus The Moses Family of Tennessee, its Origin and History by Wm. Robert (Bob) Moses, compiled by Ruby Lee Tidwell Hranicky (a granddaughter), 2002 Actually, this work was probably written before 1995 because Edith Ward mentions Mrs. Hranicky’s work in her 1995 book.

Moses: Twigs and Branches of the Moses Family Tree, by James R. Setliffe, July 1995.

My concern here is not with any of the descendants of Samuel but with his ancestors, so what follows is a brief synopsis of the general thesis of each researcher in regard to Samuel Moses and his parentage. These works came to me from other researchers in PDF format. The citations I give below for direct quotations are to the page numbers of the PDF file of each work.

EDITH WARD BOOK, The Moses Family of Big Creek

She begins (p. iv, PDF) by mentioning John Moses who baptized five of his children in 1753 in Prince Frederick Winyah church in South Carolina in 1753. The children were Betty, 11; Sarah, 9; John, 7; Joshua 3, Samuel, 7 months. 

Although she doesn’t mention this, we know from Y-DNA testing that the descendants of Joshua Moses of Whitley County, Kentucky, the descendants of Samuel Moses of Monroe County, Tennessee, and the descendants of John Moses of Randolph County, Georgia, all belong to the same Moses line. The birth dates of the three Moses men—Joshua, John, and Samuel--match closely the ages of the children who were baptized in South Carolina. Further, the 1763 tax list of Anson County, North Carolina, shows that a John Moses was living there at that time. In the same area lived a Moses Tallent and a Thomas Tallent. Members of the Tallent family later intermarried with the descendants of Samuel Moses. In 1793 Joshua Moses was a witness to a land grant that was given to Samuel Moses.

Mrs. Ward (p. 370, PDF) quotes a copy of a statement from Glenda Clinkenbeard (born 1938), a descendant of Samuel, that “Lawrence’s great grandfather and his brother came from the old county. Don’t know where but I believe nationality was German Jew… His brother went north and they never heard from him.” Mrs. Ward says that other descendants of Samuel have said something similar about a Jewish origin. The Lawrence Moses mentioned by Ms. Clinkenbeard was the g-g-g grandson of Samuel Moses and was born in 1877. 

Nevertheless, in spite of these statements by some descendants of Samuel, Mrs. Ward appears to think that Samuel lived in Anson from early childhood until he moved after 1800 (p. 1, PDF). She appears to reject or remain neutral on the German-Jewish origin. The brother who went north, of course, fits the description of Joshua of Whitley County, which is north of Tennessee.

Mrs. Ward also mentions that not all descendants of Samuel had a tradition of Samuel having been born in Germany. Dan A. Raper of Englewood, Tennessee, wrote a letter in May 1997 to Mrs. Ward (p. 517, PDF). He said that Mary Alice Atkins (born 1884), the eighth child of Andy and Junetta Tallent Atkins, was his grandmother and that information from her “when I was a young boy, that Joshua Moses the son of Samuel Moses of Anson County, N.C., that Samuel was the son of John Moses.”

HRANICKY BOOK,  A Little Before…A Little After, the Families of Robert Lee and Sarah Dorcas Hunt Moses and the ROBERT MOSES BOOK, The Moses Family of Tennessee, its Origin and History

The second work is that of Ruby Hranicky. Like that of Mrs. Ward, this work includes much valuable information about the descendants of Samuel, but she does not really address the issue of the ancestors of Samuel Moses. She does, however, include in her booklet, starting on p.143 (PDF) a narrative about Samuel’s ancestors by William Robert (Bob) Moses of Englewood, Tennessee. Bob Moses states that most of his material came from his grandfather, David James Martin Moses, who was born in 1891 in McMinn County, Tennessee. 

Bob Moses begins by asserting that Samuel Moses was really named Samuel Joshua Moses and that Samuel passed down through the generations of his descendants the information that Bob Moses has recorded in this work. On page 149 (PDF), he cites a letter he wrote to Ruby Hranicky:

January 28, 1992

Mrs. Ruby Lou Hranicky

2706 Bretshire

Corpus Christi, Texas 78414

Dear Ruby Lou,

If I get histrionic in this letter, please forgive me. First, congratulations on a marvelous piece of work! Second, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for letting me see  it. I thought that I would never find the Texas part of our family again. I am sending you a rough, unedited copy of my effort to date and, when you read it, understand that my  grandfather could neither read nor write, which puts me at a great disadvantage because I have to work from phonetic spellings.  I have waited too long to put the story to paper. When I was a child I didn't believe the story, but now I believe, either true or false, the story needs to be brought out into the open for examination by all. If it proves to be a myth, then it is a myth.

What has bothered me all these years is that none of the people who were privy to this story were educated. Most of them couldn't read or write, although a few could sign their names. With this being the case, how on earth did they get such accurate, detailed information about Samuel and his family if the story isn't true? I mean I was given details right down to street names. For the streets that I can remember, I have checked and they really exist. There is a Bond Street and a Fleet Street in London, as well as a  Blackfriars' Bridge and a Harmsworth Park, and there was once a Saint Thomas Infirmary there as well as the Embankment where Mary and Samuel loved to go for walks.

Samuel was on the ship Tryal in January, 1767. I have plotted dates and places on a map and everything fits in a logical sequence. Everything that I have verified that my grandfather told me has been right on the money; land deals, marriages, census records, deaths, and places of burial. There is a city named Aachen in Germany and there is a Kelmis Road and a Vaals Road, and there was a Jewish community that very few people know about because it was destroyed so long ago. But, still, a part of me says that the story isn't true because I can't get something tangible to support certain parts of ft.

I now know where I got the Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego that I mention in my paper. When I looked through your book, the light came on. They didn't have anything to do with the Moses family but they were members of the Hicks family and that is the reason Grandpa couldn't remember much about them. One Hicks name that I can remember clearly is Isaac and the person he was named for lived in Sheffield, England. Their house was in a grove of trees beside a stream, between two small towns, the names of which escape me. There is supposed to be only one major stream in Sheffield. A shop was built on the stream bank near the house. The down-stream villagers knew when the forges were running at full operation because the stream would turn brown. The other name I recall is a Major John Hicks and he fought for the British in the Revolutionary War. When the war was over he stayed in this country. Another John Hicks was killed, along with John Moses and another man, at Eleazer Church about 1842. I do recall the Hicks were prominent in Bradley County. The family had come north of us by crossing the back side of Monroe County to the Old Federal Road and they stopped near the Polk County and Monroe County line for a while, before going on to Bradley County. There was some
incident years ago that they got involved in, but I don't remember what it was about. A Hicks lady got murdered is about all I can recall. The information is supposed to be in the Bradley County records, but I don't know where to look.

The individual who died on the way back from Vicksburg was buried beside the road in an unmarked grave, near a spring and a big oak tree. Grandpa said that his grave probably won't ever be found. The responsibility for the young man's death was placed on Masten's back. Masten had convinced the boy's family to let him go off to war, with the promise to take care of the boy and to bring him back safely. This fellow was older than Masten but he had led a sheltered life for the times. His mother had wanted him to be a man of the cloth. I am almost certain that the one who died was named Dan. His father was supposed to have spent years looking for the grave, but he never found it. At one time a reward  was posted for any information that would help Dan's father locate the grave. Somebody in the family may still have a copy of the reward bill. I was just a little when  I saw it, so I don't know who had it. Perhaps someone will read this letter and be able to help us. 

I will tell you that Margaret Emma's Uncle Andy was not a Moses and that he and Joshua didn't get along with each other because they were jealous over who little Margaret liked the best. Her father was a Corporal in the Confederate Army and he was killed at Chickamagua. I believe that Masten's mother was Margaret Ray and that his father was the John Moses who was killed at Eleazer Church, but it will take some work to follow this up. If that is the case, then Masten's grandfather would have been Samuel's son James. Oh, I was told that James and Martha Doolin couldn't have children. Supposedly, they had one child who died young and during her birth something happened that kept Martha from ever having children. 

The envelope that you show from Anderson to Frank Moses is very interesting. I was with my grandfather the day he picked up one just like it from the the family up in the mountains. Grandpa said it was promised to the family in Texas and that Charlie was to come by his house on Monday and pick it up. Charlie was not too tall, overweight, wore glasses and a Stetson hat, and he had the prettiest cowboy boots that I have ever seen. He was one of the nicest people I have ever met and he gave me a dollar to console me about the envelope. But Charlie had a funny little way of walking; he never bent his toes when he took a step. Grandpa also told me the person who helped Anderson with his pension claim was really working against him, so that he wouldn't get it. 

Samuel Moses was, without a doubt, from Germany. What is questionable is who his father was. I am convinced that Samuel's diary is written in a form of German because I have  seen it myself. We did have the paper that Samuel signed retaining his German citizenship after the Revolutionary War, as well as a letter that he received from his sister who was still at Aachen, plus the papers that sent Samuel to this country. But stupid me, I let a man from Alabama borrow them when I was growing up and he never brought them back. I have not been successful in locating them, but I did relocate original pictures of Nancy Jane Moses and Alex McConkey, as well as the picture of Samuel and Altimira. 

There is an amusing little story about the family crest as told by Richard Moses who collected the data for the Kentucky Moses book. It seems that during the feudal days in England, a serf named John broke a valuable piece of pottery while performing his kitchen duties. Rather than take a beating, he ran outside and stole a horse and wagon. While he was leaving the estate he ran through his master's chickens and killed three hens and a rooster. Many miles down the road, he sold the wagon and used the money to buy a small piece of land beside a stream. Over the years he prospered and thought he should have a last name and a family crest. He adopted the last name of Moses because of where he lived, and the crest was then invented. The crest derived from the fact that over the years, and after many tellings of
his escape, he had become known as John the chicken slayer. Ergo, the four chickens on the crest. The rooster on the top looks backward to see if anybody is following, and he is standing on a row of eggs to symbolize fertility. The crest is supposed to be white with a green chevron hatched with black and the crest is trimmed with black. After much pestering, Richard finally said that if John hadn't of existed, he should have, and Richard went on to say that he invented the crest. I will give you three guesses as to who helped pick out the colors; else, the chevron would have been lavender instead of green. Then, it could be that the crest is very ancient and Richard was just trying to impress me.An expert that I took it to years ago didn't seem to think so. At this point I don't know what to believe. You would have to meet Richard to really appreciate what I am saying. 

Richard Moses' book, THE MOSES TRIBE OF KENTUCKY, is HIGHLY suspect. I think Richard spent his whole life traveling around the country digging up records on any Moses he could find. He said he was going to search for 25 years and then write for ten. He was convinced that all the Moses in the whole world are related and he was trying to prove it. What he was looking for was proof about the John who killed the chickens. My grandfather told him more than once that we are not related and that if any connection was to be made, it woud have to be in the old country. Grandfather knew that it couldn't be done and thankfully he refused to give the man
any of our family history. This man pestered us to death for several years. I was never so glad when he got too old to travel. The last time I saw him he had the trunk and back seat of his car filled with boxes full of papers, old Bibles, and pictures of the Moses families he had met. There was no way on the face of this earth that he could make any sense out of what he had collected. 

None, and I mean none, of his Joshuas are related to us. I can account for every Joshua in our family. Rabbi Jacob Joshua is supposed to be buried at the Jewish Community at Aachen, Germany. He died circa 1789/1790. His grandfather Joshua died about 1711, and he is buried somewhere near Kloster Malchow, Germany. Samuel's brother Joshua was born about 1743 or 1744, at the Jewish Community, Aachen, Germany. He also arrived in this country in 1767, not too long after Samuel arrived. He married a woman by the last name of Seagraves after he arrived, and he had a brother-in-law named Jacob Seagraves. I strongly suspect that he is buried in Georgia, on or near the last farm he owned. He is supposed to have  an elaborate headstone. Samuel's son, Joshua, was born on the banks of the Pee Dee River in North Carolina, in 1806 and, as you know, he married Sarah Samples . His grandson, Joshua, married Thursey Gardiner, and I have included his information for you. I know two of this Joshua's descendants and they are also working very hard on the Moses line. I know the information on this Joshua is accurate. 

I have a strong belief that Samuel 's Jessie is buried near the horeshoe bend in the Tellico River, beyond the end of the road that ran between the old house and the barn. The farm was at the upper end of Laurel Mountain and Laurel Creek runs through the property where it meets the Tellico River. The house was no longer standing when I was last there in 1955, but part of the foundation for the barn was still there, as was the little road. Two blank side-by-side headstones were still standing in the field. 

Samuel 's first wife was Mary Brown . All that James would tell my grandfather about Samuel's second wife was that she was the Virginia woman, and James would give different locations of where she is buried . I weakly believe that her name was Elizabeth . My grandfather could never understand how come James could remember Mary Brown, who died before he was born, but he coudn't remember Samuel's second wife who died when James was 17, and whose funeral he attended.
And lastly, there is Anderson Moses' son Joshua. He  needs no explanation. 

I am sorry that I ran on so long and that I am unable to get the address for the other book on the Moses family of Kentucky as I promised, but the person who had it is now deceased. I guess I should have figured that out, but it doesn't seem like I bave been away from home for nearly 30 years.

If it isn't too much trouble, could you ask Charlie ifhe remembers anything about my Grandfather, Dave Moses . 

Dave's nickname was Busteye.

Sincerely,

Bob Moses

I quoted the letter in its entirely because I think it gives a good summary of Bob Moses’ theory about the origins of the Moses family, and also because I want to make clear what he was actually saying. Notice he says he did not as a child believe the stories that came from his grandfather, David James Martin Moses, who was born in 1891. In a couple of place,  Bob Moses hints that some of the information goes back even further in time to a James Moses, but it’s not clear if this is a reference to the James Moses who was born in 1846 and who was the grandfather of David James Moses. For example,  he states that James could not remember the maiden name of the wife of Samuel even though she died when James was seventeen years old and James attended her funeral. That appears unlikely to be a reference to the James Moses who was born in 1846; surely no wife of Samuel could have lived until 1863 when James was seventeen.  Perhaps this is a reference to an earlier James Moses. The information that came from James Moses appears to have been rather mundane material such as that the name of Samuel Moses’ first wife was Mary Brown, and Bob Moses does not state whether the material derived from James was transmitted orally or through written material. For the most part, Bob Moses attributes his information about the Jewish origin of the Moses line to his grandfather, David James Moses.

Further, Bob Moses makes the statement “Samuel Moses, without a doubt, was from Germany. What is questionable is who his father was.” This raises even more questions, because he had previously said that his grandfather provided details about Samuel’s life in Germany and England including the  very streets where he lived. Even more questions arise from this statement (p. 151):

I am convinced that Samuel's diary is written in a form of German because I have seen it myself. We did have the paper that Samuel signed retaining his German citizenship after the Revolutionary War, as well as a letter that he received from his sister who was still at Aachen, plus the papers that sent Samuel to this country. But stupid me, I let a man from Alabama borrow them when I was growing up and he never brought them back. I have not been successful in locating them.

There was no such thing as German citizenship prior to 1871, only citizenship of the various Germany principalities. If Samuel really came to American in 1767, he almost certainly was an American citizen automatically when the American Revolution ended in 1783. It is doubtful that anyone who came to America as an immigrant would be interested in whether he would still be considered a citizen in the old country. As for Bob Moses giving away his grandfather’s priceless family records away to an unnamed person from another state when he was a child, I have no doubt that there is some valid story behind this statement, but I struggle to understand it. Since there is no diary extant at the present day, we have no evidence the diary was written in German or some unknown code, or whether the sister who wrote the letter was then living in Aachen or somewhere else.  

As for the claim that Samuel Moses came to America in 1767 on the ship Tryal, it would be helpful to know whether Bob Moses made this assumption or if the source was his grandfather.True, there was an English Samuel Moses who was sentenced to deportation as a petty thief in 1767 and who came to Philadelphia on the ship Tryal but that Samuel Moses is apparently lost to history. There is no proof he was the same person as the Samuel Moses who lived in Monroe County, Tennessee, nor a record of what happened to Samuel Moses of 1767 after he got to Philadelphia. Here is the record of the trial:

https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/print.jsp?div=17670115 
(L.) 121. Samuel Moses was indicted for stealing a woollen waistcoat, value 12 d. the property of Charles Hammerton ; and a woollen cloth coat , the property of Richard Rawlins , Dec. 19 . ++
Charles Hammerton . I am a paviour employed by the commissioners. On the 19th of December, in the evening, I was looking over my men in Newgate-street ; I observed the prisoner and another man loitering about; my people said they had observed them some time; in a few minutes I heard the cry stop thief; my men pursued, and took the prisoner: the other witness will give a farther account.
William Fullham. I was at work; the clothes were laid upon a post: I saw the prisoner take the coat and waistcoat, and run away; I pursued, calling stop thief; he dropped the clothes in Newgate-street; and he was stopped in Newgate-market by the butchers; (the clothes produced in court)
Richard Rawlins . This coat is my property; I had left it upon a post, from whence the prisoner took it; the waistcoat is the property of the apprentice.
Prisoner's defence. 
I heard them call stop, thief, and a butcher stopped me; I know nothing about the things.
Guilty. T.

Though Bob Moses does not go into detail about how Samuel Moses was deported to America, the actual court record is at variance with the explanation given by James Setliffe (p. 16, PDF) who claims that his work is based on the work of Bob Moses and David James Moses. Setliffe’s version is that Samuel was arrested because he did not fulfill his obligations as an apprentice:

Samuel stopped showing up for work, a fact which broke his apprenticeship agreement. At this time in history this was a very serious infraction of the law. The incident about his honeymoon had soured his relationship with his employer. His older brother, Joshua Samuel, tired of having to go to his younger brother's home to force him to go to work. He finally gave up trying as he felt Samuel was old enough to show some maturity. He also tired of paying Samuel's rent. One day, as Samuel came out of his house, two policemen were waiting for him. Samuel's first inclination was to run away, which he tried without success. The date was December 18,
1766. He was taken to the Police Station at Charring Cross for processing and was then transported to the Old Bailey. 

So, instead of Samuel Moses, a  recent German-Jewish immigrant in London leaving his house and being arrested for breaking his apprenticehsip by “two policemen” an occupation that did not exist in London in 1767, the real Samuel Moses, English thief and deportee to America on the shipTryal, was the object of a citizen’s arrest as he fled down the street pursued by a butcher and a man who was was supervising a crew of men who were paving the street. His crime was stealing two coats someone had carelessly left on a post in the street.

Next, Bob Moses mentions his grandfather Dave Moses’ quarrel with Richard Moses, the author of the book The Moses Tribe of Kentucky. David James Martin Moses seems to have had his set theory of the origin of the Moses family and did not wish to give any information that could be used as ammunition by anyone who might present a challenge: “My grandfather told him more than once that we are not related.” (p.152 PDF). Of establishing a connection between Joshua Moses of Whitley County and Samuel Moses of Monroe County, Bob Moses states, “Grandfather knew it couldn’t be done and he refused to give the man any of our family history.” (p. 152, PDF). Bob Moses himself also refused to cooperate with Richard Moses, “I was never so glad when he got too old to travel.” (p. 152, PDF. Bob Moses himself was adamant that his German Jewish family was not related to Joshua Moses of Kentucky: “None, and I mean none, of his Joshuas are related to us….Samuel’s brother Joshua was born about 1743 or 1744 at the Jewish community, Aachen, Germany, and arrived in this country in 1767… He married a woman with the last name of Seagraves…I strongly suspect he is buried in Georgia…He is supposed to have an elaborate headstone.”  (p.152, PDF). 

We are told by Bob Moses that David James Martin Moses had detailed information about the German-Jewish origins of his ancestor Samuel in Aachen, Germany, but also that the grandfather was completely unaware that Samuel had relatives in Whitley County, Kentucky. Yet we know that other descendants of Samuel believed that Samuel had a brother who moved north of Tennessee (Joshua in Whitley County, Kentucky). 

This lack of cooperation by both David James Martin Moses and his grandson Bob with Richard Moses, who was a sincere and well-meaning researcher, and their inability to provide paper documentation for their unique theory (except for some papers that were given away to an unknown man from Alabama) raises serious questions in my mind about the German-Jewish immigrant origin for Samuel Moses. Some of their tradition may be true, but their theory needs to be revised in regard to the relationship between Samuel Moses of Monroe County and Joshua Moses of Whitley County, Kentucky. Not only were these two men related but they were almost certainly brothers. 

Y-DNA testing is the gold standard in genealogical DNA testing, and Y-DNA testing has conclusively proven that Joshua Moses of Kentucky, Samuel Moses of Monroe County, and John Moses of Georgia were all related. Descendants of all three men have taken Y-DNA tests. These three were most likely the sons that were baptized at Prince Frederick Winyah church in South Carolina in 1753 by their father, John Moses. We know that a John Moses lived in Anson County in the 1760s and there are records of Samuel and Joshua in Anson County well after 1800.  

None of the descendants of John Moses of Georgia or Joshua Moses of Kentucky have an oral tradition of a German-Jewish origin, so far as I can tell. If Samuel descends from Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jewish ancestors, we should be able to confirm that tradition through DNA testing, either Y-DNA or autosomal. Wikipedia has a good summary of Jewish DNA. So far, no such confirmation through DNA testing has surfaced. The Y-DNA haplogroup I-M170 to which this Moses family belongs, is extremely rare among men of Jewish descent. In my communications with other Moses researchers I have not found anyone who has taken an autosomal DNA test who has reported the finding of any significant Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Nevertheless, could John Moses who baptized his children in 1753 have been of Jewish ancestry?  Possibly, if that ancestry was with John’s parents or grandparents Still, if the three brothers—Joshua, Samuel, and John—had been born to parents who at one time had been Jewish, I think the tradition of such ancestry would have been widespread among all branches of the family. We may never know for certain, but if the Jewish ancestry was very far back in time, perhaps earlier than 1700, that ancestry could be so remote that it might not appear in most DNA tests. 

It is, therefore, still possible that somewhere back in time one of the Moses was a Jew. Though the Moses surname does not invariably indicate a Jewish origin and there are many Moses families that were never Jewish, when my mother first told me that her grandmother had the surname of Moses, my first thought was that the family may have been Jewish at one time. Moses, both as a surname and a given name, is strongly associated with Jews. I think this may also explain why David James Martin or one of his ancestors was so fixated on the Jewish origin theory. Often parents tell family tradition stories to their children, stories that have become garbled as they pass through generations. In my Sanders family, it is told that my third great grandfather Benjamin Sanders (1766-1849) was an Irish Catholic who converted to Protestantism at a camp meeting when he was over 100 years old. Everyone appears to believe the story until we looked at the documentary evidence. The census records show he could not have lived over 100 years (unless they missed him on the 1850 and 1860 census records) and he could not have been Roman Catholic (unless his religion was different from everyone else in the family). So, what was true about the tradition? Probably, only that his ancestors had been Irish and when he was an old man he had a very dramatic religious conversion at a camp meeting. I think something similar may be going on with the German-Jewish theory about Samuel Moses. It may have grown over time with more detail and more extravagant claims in each generation. 

The German-Jewish origin is somewhat doubtful not only because it is unconfirmed by other branches of the Moses family but also because it would be historically atypical. It would be almost unheard of for someone to be born into a family of educated Jewish rabbis in Aachen, Germany, and then come to America and settle in the North Carolina back country and become a subsistence farmer, living with illiterate frontiersmen. Jews in Europe by tradition had not been allowed to own land and did not farm, even after legal restrictions were removed. If they came to America in colonial times, they nearly always settled in cities. 

Bob Moses (p.300, PDF) provides a chart of his ancestors, showing the parents of Samuel Joshua Moses as Jacob Joshua Moses and Rachel Klein of Aachen in present day Germany. He states this material was provided by his grandfather, David James Moses. I have been unable to find any documentation that this rabbi and his wife actually existed, though it is certainly possible. A few pages later, Bob Moses gives the ancestors of Jacob Joshua Moses, often with precise birth and death dates. I won’t go into detail on the wives and children ascribed to Samuel by Bob Moses, but the chart has Samuel moving from Germany to England, to Ireland, to Virginia, North Carolina, to Tennessee, then back to North Carolina, then eventually to Monroe County, Tennessee. It is not clear to me how much of the material concerning a German-Jewish ancestry is from any family tradition that may be older than the lifetime of David James Martin Moses, who was born in 1891. 

 
JAMES SETLIFFE WORK, Moses: Twigs and Branches of the Moses Family Tree

 
Although there are many perplexing questions about the material provided by Bob Moses, there are even more when we peruse the third work examined here, Moses Twigs and Branches. Though he appears to have written a bit later than Bob Moses, James Setliffe gives much more detail about the life of Samuel Moses than any of the other authors examined here.

This extra detail, in itself, is far beyond what one would typically find in a family history. It is not at all clear why this added material, if it was part of family tradition or was present in recorded documents, was unmentioned by Bob Moses in the material he provided for Ruby Hranicky's work, even though James Setliffe states that most of his material came from David James Martin Moses through Bob Moses (p. 5, PDF): 

David James Martin Moses (1891 - 1956) passed down to his grandson, William Robert Moses, that he remembered that he had been told that the family came into Russia from Constantinople around 970 AD. The  family had left Jerusalem around the time of King David, traveling to Antioch where they stayed until 969 AD, when they left for Istanbul for the Synod to be held in 970 AD. While they were at the Synod, Antioch was destroyed.For this reason, they went to what is now Russia.

This is a rather enigmatic statement, even aside from the historical inaccuracy about Antioch being destroyed in 970 A.D. Would Protestant Tennessee farmers in the early 1800s have retained copious amounts of oral tradition about Jewish ancestors who lived a thousand  years ago in Palestine, Syria,  Russia, and Germany? According to census records, David James Martin Moses, the grandfather of Bob Moses and the human repository of all this extensive history and tradition, was unable to read or write.

Even if David James Moses had a phenomenal memory of stories told to him by his elderly relatives, it seems unlikely he could retain the level of detail that is manifested in the following passage (p.14, PDF): 

Samuel Joshua, accompanied by an escort, left the community, going first to Aachen, then to Cologne, then down the Rhine to Dusseldorf where a coach would be taken to other points in Germany. From Dusseldorf, Samuel and the escort traveled across Coventry to Hamburg. Samuel treated this trip like a vacation. He had a good time on the trip and caused some trouble for the escort who was to report Samuel's behavior to his father. It seems that at rest stops Samuel would wander off and the escort would have to look for him, to see that they did not miss the coach. On one occasion, when Samuel was growing tired of being ordered around, he became hostile and combative. The escort prevailed and punched Samuel in the mouth, knocking him flat on his back. He left him there until he decided that he wanted to behave. Samuel would not take anything seriously. He and the escort finally reached Hamburg where the escort left Samuel's company after seeing him aboard his ship for England.

 
We have noted earlier the statement of Bob Moses that when he was a teenager, he gave away to an unknown man from Alabama Samuel Moses' diary and a letter, which were apparently the only physical documentation of the German-Jewish heritage. Thereafter, presumably, the  evidence remaining was what David James Moses recounted to his grandson Bob Moses. The latter, in turn, passed the material on to James Setliffe, who married into the Moses family and then provided a written account of the family history.

In this work, the extensive detail goes on for page after page, describing Samuel Moses’ life in England, in Ireland, then in Virginia. There is an account of Samuel's marriage to an Irish woman, stories about letters he had written, even stories about the actual contents of the luggage he brought with him to America.  

Here is anotheer example (p.17, PDF): 

After Samuel's deportment, his brother, Joshua Samuel, put Mary on a ship back to Ireland. Mary had not told Samuel that she was expecting a child. Samuel's first child, a son, was born in 1767 in Ireland at his grandfather's home. He was given the name William, and the lad became very attached to his grandfather. When Mary finally reunited with her husband in Virginia, one can imagine Samuel's surprise when he learned that he had a son. The child did not warm up to his father, nor did Samuel feel any great warmth for his unexpected son. 

In that same year (1771) Samuel and Mary bought a two-wheel wagon and headed over the old Corduroy Road along the Roanoke River towards the western part of Virginia, to White's Gate where he turned south. In places the old road had washed out or had entirely disappeared; often so bad that Samuel had to detour around it. This really did not matter since he could not get lost with a river to follow. The route they used took them through Montgomery County, Virginia. 

One evening the family camped along the Roanoke River. Samuel was trying very hard to get to know his son, but he was met with rejection at every attempt he made.

Then, Samuel discovers his flour sack was full of weevils (p. 19, PDF): 

It was at this point that Samuel discovered that his flour was full of weevils. This meant that he had to go north, out of his way, to Bean's Station to buy flour. He took a horse and rode to the Station while the girl and baby camped beside the Holston River. From that campsite he turned south, following the river which he finally crossed at a point north of where Knoxville now stands. This is supposed to be an area around present-day Strawberry Plains. It is a place where the river straightens out a bit, before the Holston River enters the gorges and cliffs. From there, he traveled to a point near present-day Dandridge. (Dandridge was called something else at that time.) He rested for a bit and then was ready to cross the mountains into North Carolina. By now he had come to realize that the route drawn on his
map was much harder to travel than he had been led to believe. The route turned out to be a blazed trail. In some places Samuel had to cut trees to get
his two-wheeled wagon through. However, at this point there was no turning back. 

On page eighteen is a dramatic story of Samuel meeting his brother Joshua for the last time. According to this account, Joshua was living in Georgia and he made a “special trip” in 1805 back to North Carolina, where he tried to persuade Samuel to move to Georgia and live with him. This almost certainly refers to the Joshua Moses who was living in Anson County, North Carolina and who later moved to Whitley County, Kentucky. Joshua of Whitely has been proven by DNA testing to be related to Samuel Moses of Monroe County, Tennessee. Yet, in contrast to this story, we  now know that Joshua's descendants have no tradition that he ever lived in Georgia, and census records and family tradition suggest that Joshua moved directly to Kentucky from North Carolina. It is possible that the two brothers did not see each other after 1805 but the dramatic meeting of the two brothers described in this work may be an embellishment  by a later generation, a garbled version of what really happened.

On page 26 is another vivid account, in this case of the reasons that Samuel moved from North Carolina. People often tell amusing and wildly exaggerated stories to their children, stories that were often inconsistent and contradictory. This one was told by someone called old Granny Martin,  "As she told it, Samuel and his son, James, and a John Martin and his kids, were working their way across North Carolina, county by county, stealing whatever they were able to find and take without getting caught. Samuel Moses and John Martin were responsible for a gang of thieves. This is not an easy fact to report about one's ancestor."

Many of these tales are revelatory of the violence, moral looseness, and illiteracy that often existed in frontier communities, but what is striking about all the stories  in this work is that they are completely at variance with the narrative that Samuel Moses was from an educated, urbane, and sophisticated Jewish community in Aachen. How this scion of men learned in the Jewish law came to be living as a subsistence farmer in rural North Carolina and Tennessee is never addressed. Nor is there any mention of Samuel’s religious sentiments, aside from the statement that he was raised Jewish. From what I gather through other sources, Samuel Moses, or at least his descendants, were Baptists. His brother Joshua of Whitley County, Kentucky, had a son who was a Baptist minister. Samuel’s  putative brother John who died in 1809 in Georgia was a member of a Baptist Church. I would like to think that Samuel, if he provided copious details to his descendants about weevils in his flour as he trekked through North Carolina (see story above), would also have provided some information on the far more important matterof his own religious conversion from Judaism to protestant Christianity.

On page 41, James Setliffe provides a chart of the ancestors of Samuel Moses. It goes back to a Jacob who was born in Grimmen or Kloster Malchow in Germany. Malchow is a real village in Germany but Kloster Malchow is not the name of a city but the name of a former Roman Catholic nunnery that was located in Malchow. This Jacob, according to the author, was reportedly the father of Jacob Joshua Moses who was born in 1719 in Kloster Malchow. He is said to have married a Rachel Klein or Stein and to have been the father of Samuel of Monroe County, his brother Joshua, a daughter named Sarah, and a son named Joseph. Through the genealogy work of Bob Moses and James Setliffe, and Bob’s late grandfather David James Martin Moses, these names have been copied into hundreds of family trees that can be found at Ancestry.com or at FamilySearch.org. Nevertheless, so far as I can tell, there is no independent documentation that a Jacob Joshua Moses or a Rachel Klein (or Stein) ever existed. If they did exist, there seems to be no documentation that they were the parents of Samuel Moses of Monroe County, Tennessee. 

This is from p.7 and 8 of the Setliffe work:

This was a young school as the Jews had only been in Berlin a little over 20 years when Jacob Joshua began his studies. Jews were allowed into Berlin around 1712, but with the understanding that they would not establish a synagogue. Instead, they established a school. 

Jacob Joshua had difficulty getting into this school because he was a gypsy Jew. The school officials felt that his education at Kloster Malchow was inferior. The Rabbi who had taught Jacob Joshua was persistent and he was able to arrange for an interview and for a test for Jacob Joshua at the school. Jacob Joshua and the old Rabbi went to Berlin. The test was purposely designed to be hard, with the intent that Jacob Joshua would fail. 

During the interview portion, Jacob Joshua was impressive because he could give his family tree back to a point before Alexander the Great. The Rabbi doing the interview was impressed, but skeptical. He had Jacob Joshua give his lineage once again and this time he wrote it down as he planned to verify each detail.

 On tbe way back to Kloster Malchow, Jacob Joshua was depressed and he remained so for several weeks. Word finally came that he had passed the test and that his family tree was correct! He had been accepted by the school. Jacob Joshua's father, Jacob, had misgivings about the school and his son's enrollment there.

Actually, Jews had been in Berlin well before 1712, but it is not the date when the Jews arrived in Berlin that is troubling; it is the plethora of detail that is given in this work, detail that we are told was passed down through generations of oral transmission in rural Tennessee. Since none of the researchers mentioned here gives the provenance of their elaborate detail about Samuel Moses' purported German-Jewish ancestry, how much of that tradition was based on information passed down in family lore and how much is an elaboration or creative construction by someone in a later generation is anyone’s guess. Even if we grant that the original family documents were given away about sixty or more years ago, we still have the difficult problem of accounting for the extensive detail of the narratives written in the 1990s and early 2000s. Anyone who could remember such copious amounts of material from decades old conversations with an elderly relative would have a singular capacity to recall.  

Summary: 

The question addressed here is the parentage of Samuel Moses of Monroe County, Joshua Moses of Whitley County, and John Moses of Georgia. What are my conclusions from the actual documentation we have? 

First, we know from Y-DNA tests that all three are closely related. Since there is a tradition in the Whiteley County branch of the family that Joshua had a brother named Samuel and in the Monroe County branch that Samuel had a brother named Joshua, I think we can assume they were brothers. There is a tradition in one branch of the Samuel Moses family that his brother Joshua moved north, which points toward Joshua of Whitley County, Kentucky. We can probably assume John of Georgia is a brother, too. 

We know this family was living in Anson County, North Carolina in the 1770s and 1780s. We also know a John Moses was living in the same County and he was the earliest Moses to appear in the area. 

We know that Joshua Moses of Whitely County, Kentucky, stated on his Revolutionary War pension application that he was born in 1748 on the Yadkin River in North Carolina. This alone suggests that his brother Samuel, who was born about 1753, was not a native of Germany.

Further, we know a John Moses baptized his children at Prince Frederick Winyah Church in 1753 in South Carolina. While we don’t have documentary evidence that this is the same John as the one who appears in Anson, the names of the children and the years of their births match those of the Moses men in Anson and the one in Georgia.

Therefore, the most logical conclusion is that John Moses is the most distant known ancestor of our Moses line and that this family was in the American colonies in the 1740s.
 
We also know from the Y-DNA of this Moses line that the Y-DNA is unlikely to be Jewish. Autosomal DNA tests do not show any appreciable Jewish ancestry, either. This doesn’t make Jewish ancestry impossible, just doubtful. A similar situation occurs with the many claims made by white Southerners that they have American Indian ancestry. Often when they their DNA is tested, no Indian ancestry shows up. Since DNA tests include only a portion of one’s entire DNA ancestry, it is still possible that the Indian ancestry could be there, but if it exists, the Indian ancestor was probably remote in time. The same is true with any possible Jewish ancestry of this Moses line.

Only one branch of the Samuel Moses line presents the theory of a German- Jewish ancestry for the family. Since that branch has no sources that independent researchers can examine and since their claims conflict with what can be determined by verified paper and DNA documentation, I remain skeptical of those claims. Perhaps there is a substance of truth there;maybe old John Moses of Anson had a Jewish father or grandfather and maybe that tradition was passed down to David James Martin Moses and others. If that is the case, I suspect that at some point in time, perhaps in the early twentieth century, an ambitious and detailed magnification of this tradition was devised, but it is not at all certain who constructed this elaboration or why so much material of unknown provenance was inserted. With the works I have examined, there is no way for the reader to separate the assertions of the authors about their family history from the bare bones of the tradition derived from their parents and grandparents. I don’t question the sincerity of belief of those who present this German-Jewish theory, and most of their material on the descendants of Samuel Moses may be valuable and trustworthy genealogy. Still, the German-Jewish theory of Samuel’s origins, with all its exotic drama and minute detail about events in the daily lives of people who lived hundred of years ago, warrants a healthy skepticism.

May 25, 20220; revised April 29, 2024