I started servicing pianos for pay a bit over 20 years ago. One of my very early clients - and my first client that REALLY knew how to play the piano was Julia Mosely. What a wonderful and amazing woman. She passed away last month at the ripe age of 101 years. She had a Master's Degree from Florida State University in piano performance.
If you like old homes and things that used to be, read on - you may find it interesting. If not, oh well. Recent posts by Maggie Jusiel (maybe on Facebook) inspired me to share.
First of all, her house. She lived there her entire life. Her grandfather built it in 1886. Originally had no electricity or plumbing - both were added some decades ago. Still no AC (did I mention she lived just outside of Tampa, Florida?). She had two grand pianos in her living room - one a marvelous Baldwin R (it has soul), and an over-the-hill Sorry & Clunk that belongs in a landfill. I tuned and worked on her piano (the Baldwin) for free because she was able to give me so much needed feedback in my early days of piano technology. She had some sort of hand condition - looked like super-bad arthritis but was something else - it made playing the piano very difficult for her. I lightened up the action - if I remember correctly, trimmed hammer moldings, removed leads and moved capstans - first time I ever did anything like that - so that her action was horribly light. If I remember correctly, DW were maybe in the low to mid 40s. She loved it because it enabled her to keep playing. So she was in her early 80s when I first worked for her - she was so pretty, I thought she might be in her early or mid-60s and lookin' good for that age! The experience of doing such in-depth work on her piano in my first year of doing piano technology - and the feedback she provided - was invaluable to me.
If you like, take a tour of her home - it is super amazing - I guarantee you've not seen anything quite like it:
Moseley House
Most of what you see on the tour is somewhat self-explanatory, but two amazing features of her home is that it is a genuine "Florida Cracker" home. Each room has four outside walls - there are breezeways between each of the main rooms - important if you live in Florida and have no AC! With the tall ceilings, it never got warmer inside the home than it was outside - of course, that meant when it was 95 outside, it was 95 inside - but not 115 degrees like my concrete-block ranch would be if I wasn't running the AC. She would call me to tune her piano in July and I would tell her I was busy until November! The other thing is the walls in the living room - they are covered with hand-painted palm fronds - painted by her mother (or maybe it was her grandmother). On the tour, when you are in the living room, click on the circle near the bench for the black Baldwin R and look at the mantle - you can get a close-up of the palm fronds - painted palm fronds floor to ceiling on all the walls in there - very beautiful and unique.
Here are links to two short recent articles in the Tampa Bay Times about Julia and her homestead:
The last Moseley has died, but homestead in middle of Brandon remains
| Tampa Bay Times |
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| The last Moseley has died, but homestead in middle of Brandon remains |
| BRANDON - The Moseley family nicknamed every structure and room on their homestead. The outhouse is The Deluge because it featured a bathtub. The porch is The Cup and Bucket - in pioneering years, they allowed passing cattleman to drink from the well. The full 15 acres is The Timberly due to the number of trees. |
| View this on Tampa Bay Times > |
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And here is the other one:
The vanishing Florida of Julia Winifred Moseley and her reverence for the land | Column
| Tampa Bay Times |
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| The vanishing Florida of Julia Winifred Moseley and her reverence for the land | Column |
| So much of what made Florida special is vanishing: the unhurried beaches and crystal-clear natural springs, the roadside fruit stand and sugar cane boils. Julia Winifred Moseley died last week at the age of 101. Her story is Tampa Bay and Florida writ large. |
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Her property is located right on State Road 60 - the main east-west drag through Brandon (where I live), Tampa and Clearwater. It's like four or five lanes each way today. She has told me stories about remembering SR 60 being a shell road before it was ever paved (oyster shells - many "gravel" roads in Florida are actually covered with oyster shells) - and horse-drawn carriages before cars. Her property is right in the middle of where all the car dealers and malls are in Brandon - it is all built up in the area, except for this quarter-mile long strip of woods right in the middle of it all. Pretty darn amazing.
I'll miss her. I wish I could talk to her once more (at least!) and listen to her play her freshly-tuned Baldwin R once more......
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Terry Farrell
Farrell Piano Service, Inc.
Brandon, Florida
terry@farrellpiano.com813-684-3505
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