Roger W. Moss Jr.

Roger W. Moss (January 31, 1940 -- February 8, 2025) was an historian, educator, administrator and author in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Throughout a long career he has also been an aggressive and entrepreneurial advocate for the preservation and authentic restoration of historic buildings. For forty years Moss directed the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, a special collections library near Independence Hall, and for 25 of those years he also taught in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania.

Early years

Roger William Moss was born and raised in Zanesville, Ohio, the only child of Roger William and Dorothy Elizabeth Martin Moss. He received his B.S.Ed and M.A. degrees from Ohio University.^[1] During the summer of 1962 he was an assistant to the director of the Peace Corps staff preparing the first team destined for the Cameroon.^[2] While pursuing his Master of Arts degree he was curator of rare books at Ohio University Library which resulted in his first publications.^[3] In 1964 Moss accepted a teaching fellowship from The University of Delaware leading to his Ph.D. with a major in early American history and a minor in American Material Culture at Winterthur Museum. During the summer of 1966 he studied English country houses and collections as an Attingham Trust Fellow.^[4] and during the academic year 1967-68 he was an adjunct lecturer in history for the University of Delaware and the University of Maryland extension programs.^[5]