The Moseley Family

Julia Daniels Moseley leaves behind a significant legacy of writing, artwork, and personal letters that offer insight into the era’s history and provide a rare voice and perspective of a woman from that time.

Julia Daniels Moseley’s descriptive correspondence was compiled into a book by her granddaughter, Julia Winifred Moseley. Julia Winifred was the family historian and became the steward of Timberly—the name given to the land around the homestead. Like her grandmother before her, Julia Winifred lived her entire life there—from her birth in 1919 to her passing 101 years later, on August 9, 2020. She worked tirelessly, along with the help of family friend the late Betty Powers Crislip, to ensure that the legacy of Julia Daniels Moseley and the story of Timberly would endure. Together, they archived and preserved countless historic letters, journals, writings, and correspondence, and created an edited book of Julia’s writings titled “Come to My Sunland: Letters of Julia Daniels Moseley from the Florida Frontier, 1882-1886.”

” A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. “

The Moseley Homestead site was listed on the United States National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and is a landmarked historic site in Hillsborough County. It is one of the last extant examples of early Florida homesteads and vernacular residential structures set within an unspoiled lakefront hammock of oak, longleaf pine, cypress, palmetto, and upland habitat. The main home and outbuildings are filled with examples of Pre-Raphaelite artwork, primitive art and folk art, and include many works by Julia Daniels and Charles Scott Moseley’s artist son Karl Moseley. Karl’s vintage ink drawings were featured in a 1930s Federal Art Series that toured numerous galleries. His work shows early landscape scenes of Limona and includes several rare depictions of African American life in the Limona and Tampa areas.