The old family home…

My Jewish ancestors came from the small town of Wintzenheim, near Colmar in Alsace. Wintzenheim is now in the region of Haut-Rhin in Alsace and has a population of about eight thousand.

The Moses family came over to London some time in the eighteenth century and established themselves as dealers in a variety of different things, including slops. Now I think of slops as something wet and left over, maybe something not very nice, in actual fact, slops were old clothes, rags or fabric. The family grew and became very extensive, but my part of it travelled to Tasmania, as I have mentioned previously. They went there as merchants and dealers, ship-owners and traders.

I would love to go and visit Hobart where they lived, although their magnificent residence Boa Vista no longer stands.

On their return to England they had another magnificent residence; built by John Nash, it overlooked Regent’s Park and it still stands there magnificently today. As I have also previously mentioned, my great-grandparents omitted to marry each other, or maybe were unable because he was Jewish and she was not… maybe if they had done then I would have more knowledge of 19, York terrace, apart from a few photographs through the wire fence at the front, and of what would have been the tradesman’s entrance at the back!