The little ships.

[Rodney Mills]

Des and Victoria.

I doubt we could be related Victoria as My maternal family name of Moss is relatively new in the genealogical scheme of things.

One of my interests is genealogy. When I started tracing my Moss roots I could not get further back than my maternal great grandfather, who I knew came from the Isle of Wight. I could find no Moss connection on the Island. I vaguely remembered an aunt once saying there was a terrible dark secret in the family. That we were Jewish. Quite frankly it didn't bother me if we were, so I didn't pay much mind to it. Now being involved in genealogy I suddenly was. I put on the thinking cap and started to think of a name similar to Moss that could be Jewish. I finally used the Moss letters as an anagram and I hit on Moses. I looked up Moses on the I.O.W. and found him, his father, mother, siblings and carried it all the way back to John Moses, 1550-1580, Brading, I.O.W. Hamps. my maternal 12th great-grandfather All the Moses' were christened, married, buried as Anglicans, a few Methodists here and there. As a matter of interest, I was able to trace one of the wives, a maternal great-grandmother's line, back to a 25th great-grandfather Peter de Alchorne in b. 1260 in Suffolk.

My DNA results show I am 98% Southern English and 2% French. Perhaps the original de Alchornes was a soldiers that came over in William's army in 1066 and Explains the "French Connection.".

All family names come from occupation, geographical locations, son of (Johnson etc.) and biblical names, Moses, Abrahams, etc..


Meaning of the Name Moss:

"Moss Name Meaning & Moss Family History at Ancestry.com®
Moss Name Meaning & Moss Family History at Ancestry.comĀ®

"Moss Family History. 14-Day Free Trial. GET STARTED. English and Welsh: from the personal name Moss, a Middle English vernacular form of the Biblical name Moses. English and Scottish: topographic name for someone who lived by a peat bog, Middle English, Old English mos, or a habitational name from a place named with this word."


The conclusion of why the name was changed was my great-grandfather moved from the I.O.W. to the East-end of London in 1870. There was a large influxof Russian Jews into England following a pogrom in Russia. Most settled in the East End of London and became resented by the London locals. A assume this was the cause of the change of name from Moses to Moss.

So Victoria, sadly I don't think we could be related. Shame, you sound like a very nice person who would have brightened up my family tree.

Cheers, Rodney

[Harry Nicholson]

That's interesting, Rodney. I've been a genealogist since the mid 60s, before the time the Record Offices and internet. I had to negotiate with vicars etc to inspect parish registers. There were so many of my family in the Hartlepool register I decided to transcribe the whole thing from 1566 - 1837. A wheelchair-bound volunteer did a superb index. Wife typed it, through carbons, to generate 4 copies via an ancient Underwood. They were handsomely bound and one presented to the church and another lodged the Society Of Genealogists. The original is now in a record office.
It is a slicker business today.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Harry.
Slicker and very lucrative. I tried a few places back in Wales a few years ago and was directed to the pay sight.
Des

[John F Collier]

I remember watching tugs towing lots of smart motor cruisers down the Thames and then later on watching the tugs towing a smaller number of dirty and damaged boats back up towards Richmond. It was a sight never to b e forgotten.
Terry Sullivan

Hi Terry thanks for sharing that bit of history, Charles Lightoller,{Better known as the 2nd officer of RMS TITANIC} took his boat "Sundowner"
to Dunkirk as part of the evacuation he was 66 years old and had his son and a sea scout with him, on the way over he saw a cabin cruiser on fire,
they rescued the crew and carried on to Dunkirk where they rescued 130 troops, Sundowner was meant to carry 21 people, on the way back his
biggest fear was of being swamped by the wake of the fast moving Destroyers. Charles Lightoller lived in Richmond so maybe one of the boats
you saw being towed was "Sundowner", Lightoller died in 1952 and Sundowner is now in a museum at Margate. cheers