Rev.
Peter Allen Moses was married to Miss Lucy Light Howell, in VanBuren, Arkansas,
on April 5, 1858. To this marriage were born seven children, Ellen
Augusta, died July 9, 1860, aged 1 year, 3 months; Susie Jenks, Tangent,
Oregon; Jesse Moses, Alsea; Amasa Moses, Hoopa, California; Samuel H. Moses,
Philomath, Oregon; Josephine Allen Track, Corvallis, Oregon; Victor P.
Moses, Corvallis, Oregon. The grandchildren are: Leonard J. Moses,
Mrs. Mabel Bass, Jessie Allen Moses, Jr., Everett Allen Moses, Mae Moses,
Blanche Bethers, Nellie Scott, Bernice Moore, and Victor Myron Trask.
There are four great-grandchildren, all of who can trace an honorable lineage
to their great-great-great-great grandfather, Adam Moses, who came with
his family from Holland to America, in 1746.
The
deceased was a graduate of Randolph-Macon College, one of the oldest institutions
of higher learning in Virginia. He entered the ministry in the Methodist
Episcopal church in 1851. He served as president of Wallace Institute,
Arkansas, in 1859, and president of Quitman College of that state in 1871.
During the Civil War he served as chaplain from his state under the "stars
and bars" administering to the comfort of the wounded in blue and those
in gray. After the war, he was elected state senator in Arkansas.
Upon moving to Oregon he became successively principal of the schools at
Brownsville, Lebanon, Jefferson and Albany---all in Linn County, where
he served the congregations at Brownsville, Lebanon, Junction, Albany,
Tangent, Dayton, Roseburg, Jacksonville, Lewisville, Myrtle Creek and Corvallis.
Upon retiring from the active ministry, he continued his residence in Corvallis,
where he was energetic in church, civic and education affairs, taking a
deep interest in the Orgeron Agricultural College in which he was a student
in his eighties. It will therefore be seen that his long active life
cannot be fully told in a brief recital.
By
a coincidence the time-honored names "Peter" and "Moses" anciently signified
a rock---the latter a rock from which crystal waters flow. These
names, therefore, symbolize his pure life, which was as unchangeable as
a rock. In his youth, his early manhood and old age he was ever the
same---constant in duty, steadfast in the right, and like the rock of old
that was written until the waters poured forth, the pure white life of
Peter A. Moses poured out abundantly into the chalices of those who were
athirst. Hence his name and memory are engraved deep in the minds
and hearts of those who mingled with him when he walked among men.
The
writer was a grandson of that man and my grandmother's "Uncle Peter" whom
she was devoted to. (Signed by: Bernice E. Gay Eula Mountcastle,
granddaughter of Mary Elizabeth Dickerson who was a niece of Peter and
daughter of Nancy and Nathan Dickerson.)
