Cleveland, Moses A.

Moses Allen Cleveland was born in Connecticut on October 30, 1822. After working as a farm laborer from a young age, Cleveland learned carpentry from a joiner in Hartford, Connecticut, in the late 1830s. Over the course of his life, he practiced numerous trades in New England, New York, and Ohio. On October 10, 1842, he married Eliza Ann Williams, a seamstress from Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1856, he briefly joined relatives in Ohio. His wife remained in Massachusetts, where she died shortly after her husband's return. Cleveland remarried in October 1856 and relocated his family to Ohio. He returned to Massachusetts to enlist in the Union Army, and served in the 7th Massachusetts Independent Battery from June 1864-November 1865. A private, he served mainly near the Gulf of Mexico. After the war, he returned to his family in Ohio.

From the guide to the Moses A. Cleveland collection, Cleveland, Moses A. collection, 1864-1917, 1864-1892, (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)