The Mosby Family:
Col. Mosby's Children:

 

The three youngest Mosby daughters

(photo coming soon)

John and Pauline Mosby had eight children, six of whom survived to adulthood.

The two eldest were born before the war, one was born during the war and the other were born afterwards.

Mosby was a devoted family man and doting father. When he wrote home from the War he constantly asked Pauline to send pictures of them and to "kiss the tillens" for him (the family's baby-talk nickname for the children.)

Although he was a very active and involved father to his older children, he missed the formative years of his yonger brood. When their mother died in 1876, Mosby's grief was profound. The house in Warrenton reminded him of his loss and he sold it to General Eppa Hunton the following year.

1876 was a bad year for John Mosby. His own life was in danger because of his postwar Republican sympathies, coming to a head during the hotly contested Hayes / Tilden election of 1876. Someone even took a potshot at him at Warrenton Station. For Mosby's own safety, General Grant encouraged him to accept an appointment from President Hayes as US Consul General to Hong Kong. He sent his younger children to his parents. His eldest son Beverly was in school at this time, and upon his graduation, joined his father as his aide in Hong Kong.

Children:

(Note: the following information is sketchy, being based on what we could find through online genealogy sites. Additional information from descendants and researchers is earnestly solicited.)

May Virginia Mosby Campbell:

May was the first of the Mosby children, born in May 10, 1859 in Bristol. She married Robert Campbell and had two sons, Spottswood Campbell, b. 1880 and John Mosby Campbell, b. 1882. She attended the reunion of Mosby's Rangers in 1895 and is pictured in the group photograph at this event. She died in 1904.

Beverly Clarke Mosby

The Mosby's first son was born in 1860 in Bristol. After graduating from school he went to Hong Kong where he served as his father's aide and also travelled around China.

He followed his father into the practice of law, eventually moving to Washington State. At least one of his cases was considered significantly "landmark" that it is still online as a resource for attorneys who might wish to cite it as a precedent. (US Supreme Court: ROCHE v. MCDONALD, 275 U.S. 449 (1928)

John Singleton Mosby Jr.

The Mosby's third child and second son was born in 1863. He died about a year before his father, in the late summer of 1915 and is buried near his parents in Warrenton Cemetery.

Victoria Stuart Mosby

Victoria Stuart Mosby was born in 1867 in Warrenton, named after her father's hero and commander JEB Stuart. She went by "Stuart" throughout her life.

She became a journalist and writer and lived in Washington DC with her husband Watson Coleman. She died on 13th April 1946.

The Colemans had two children, Beverly Mosby Coleman and Pauline Coleman. (click here for a picture of them with Colonel Mosby, on the set of a 1910 film in which Mosby played himself in a cameo role.)

Grandson Beverly Mosby Coleman graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1922 and culminated his Naval career as a Rear Admiral. He had been very close to his grandfather, although he was only a teenager when Col. Mosby died. Admiral Coleman gave considerable help to Virgil Carrington Jones when he was writing his seminal work on Col. Mosby, published in 1944 and later authors, including local researchers Tom Evans and the late Jim Moyer, and was an active member of the Stuart Mosby Society and frequent lecturer on his grandfather.

Pauline Mosby

Pauline Mosby was born about 1869. She represented her father at Mosby's Rangers reunions where the veterans elected her "Daughter of Mosby's Confederacy", in response to Jefferson Davis' youngest daughter being named "Daughter of the Confederacy".

Ada C. Mosby

Ada Catherine Mosby was born about 1871, named after her aunt Ada who had died shortly before her birth. In the early 1900's, she lived in an apartment on K St in Washington and Col. Mosby lived with her.

George Prentiss Mosby

George Prentiss Mosby was born in August of 1873. He died at less than a year old, on July 15, 1874 and is buried in Warrenton Cemetery.

Alfred Daniel Mosby

The baby of the family, Alfred Daniel Mosby, was born in March of 1876 in Warrenton. He died on 10 May 1876, with his mother following him in death three days later.

The family of John Singleton Mosby:

Biography | Mosby's Rangers | Mosby's Confederacy
Historic Preservation
Descendants | Album | Bibliography | Bookstore | Newsletter
Forum | Links | Events | Contribute | About this Site
The Oreo Foundation | Living History by Jeff Smith
HOME