Gratz A. Moses

"(Philadelphia-born physician Simon Gratz) Moses had moved to St. Louis in the early 1840s and practiced medicine at his residence at 22 North Eighth Street. Dr. Gratz A. Moses (probably the son of S. Gratz Moses) served as a physician with the Confederate army. The elder Moses may have returned to Philadelphia for the duration of the war; he died in St. Louis in 1897. The younger Moses also returned to St. Louis after the war and built a successful practice; he died there in 1901."

-From Civil War St. Louis

In this post, I talked about Simon Gratz Moses and speculated that he was the Gratz Moses who played with the Cyclones. The point of the post was that S. Gratz Moses was probably too old to be a playing member of the Cyclones but how many Gratz Moses could there be in St. Louis in 1860?

Based on the information in Civil War St. Louis, it appears that there were at least two. E.H. Tobias identifies the Cyclone Moses as "Dr. Gratz Moses" and Gratz A. Moses was certainly a doctor. Also, if he was the son of S. Gratz Moses, he most likely would have been in his twenties at the time of the Civil War which would fit the age demographic of the rest of the club.

Certainly Gratz A. Moses is a much better candidate for being the Cyclone Moses than S. Gratz Moses.

Gratz Moses

Scott Green sent me this interesting piece on Gratz Moses of the Cyclone Club from volume 51 of The Medical Record in 1897. What is fascinating about it is that the piece has Moses being born around 1813, meaning he would have been forty-seven years old in 1860.

If Moses was forty-seven in 1860, he almost certainly would have been the oldest member of the Cyclones. For the most part the members of the club were in their early to mid-twenties. Baseball was, and is still, a young man's game. While Moses' age doesn't necessarily rule him out as a member of the club, it certainly raises some questions. Is this the right Gratz Moses? Was Moses really a member of the club? Was he a non-playing member?

I believe that this is the Gratz Moses of the Cyclone Club. The name is too unique and according to the 1860 St. Louis city directory, there was only one Dr. S. Gratz Moses living in St. Louis at the time. Certainly nothing conclusive and more research needs to be done but I think we have our man.