The Mossell Family

The Mossells were among the most prominent and successful African American families in the Philadelphia area, producing a number of accomplished attorneys, scholars, entrepreneurs, and civil rights pioneers. The first free Mossell recorded in the U.S. census was Aaron, Sr. (b. 1824), who is listed in multiple sources as the son of a slave brought over from West Africa. Aaron met his wife Eliza (b. 1824) in Baltimore; she came from a free Black family that, at one time, had been deported to Trinidad. In 1853, the couple and their young family moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where Aaron started a brick-making business. They later returned to the United States, continuing the business in upstate New York, where the family eventually grew to have six children (one of whom died young).

It was this generation that provided some of the family's most important accomplishments. Charles Wesley (1849–1915), using the influence of the family business, helped to leverage the Lockport, New York school board to allow his siblings Nathan (1856–1946), Alveretta (b. 1858), and Aaron Albert Mossell II (1863–1951) to attend. Charles studied theology and later became a missionary in Haiti with Alveretta and his wife Mary Ella (1853–1886). Nathan, the most famous of the children, helped to establish the family in Philadelphia after earning a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania, becoming the first African American to do so; he later founded the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital and Training School. Nathan's wife, Gertrude Bustill Mossell (1855–1948), became a prominent writer and activist, and their nephew through Gertrude's side of the family was the actor Paul Robeson (1898–1976). Meanwhile, the younger Aaron became the first African American to graduate from Penn's law school.

Aaron's daughter, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (1898–1989), followed in his footsteps to become an accomplished attorney in her own right, becoming the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in economics, and at one point securing an appointment in the administration of President Carter to chair a conference on senior citizens and aging. Her husband, the lawyer and judge Raymond Pace Alexander (1897–1974), became a champion of school desegregation in Pennsylvania.

The Mossells

Aaron Mossell, Sr. (b. 1824); married Eliza Bowers (b. 1824) [Aaron later married Mary].

• 1.  Charles Wesley Mossell (1849–1915); married Mary Ella Mossell (1853–1886) [Charles later married Cornelia Hamilton].
  • Children: Mary Mossell (married A. Parker Denny)
• 2.  Nathan Francis Mossell (1856–1946); married Gertrude Bustill Mossell (1855–1948)
  • Children: Mary Campbell (Mazie) and Florence Alma (two others died while still children)
• 3.  Alveretta Mossell (b. 1858)
• 4.  Aaron Albert Mossell II (1863–1951); married Mary Louisa Tanner (1865?–1935)
  • Children: Aaron Albert Mossell III (1893–1959), Elizabeth Mossell (1894–1975), and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (1898–1989) [married Raymond Pace Alexander (1897–1974)]