The earliest record of the Moser clan that I have found dates back to Balthasar Marstaller Moser, born in 1487 in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. According to Ancestry.com, the family hung around Stuttgart for at least six more generations until Johann Georg Phillip Moser, born in 1684, immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1728. Johann Georg Phillip was only 108 years behind the Pilgrims. The Mosers were not exactly early explorers in the New World.

To be fair Johann Georg Phillip was a busy man in his early years. He married his first wife, Elisabetha Wollinger in 1695, and she died in 1714, leaving no issue. His second marriage in 1712 was to Anna “Eva” Eckersweiler. Their first son, Johan Adam Moser was born in 1710. I’ll let you do the math. Also of interest is that Johann Georg Phillip Moser and his wife, Anna “Eva” Eckersweiler, both died on October 5, 1762, in Pennsylvania. I’ll let you use your imagination.

Based on my very modest research, I believe I am the first lawyer in a clan that seems to have needed one over the years. They weren’t always on their best behavior. I have cousins (not named) who thought of me as a “Get Out Of Jail” card like you would find in a Monopoly game. I mostly succeeded.

My cousin, Amanda Jill Nordine, nee Felton, daughter of Alvin Jones (Bus) Felton and Jeanne Marie (Beck) Imbody, researched the Felton side of our family extensively on Ancestry.com. The earliest record goes back to John William Felton (dates uncertain), father of Peter Georges Felton, born in Germany in 1852 and died in Huntington, Indiana, in 1934, father of Alvin Christian Felton, my grandfather (1892 – 1962).