The community was named for William Moseley, a major landowner who donated property in the late 19th century for a railroad station. It developed as a stop on the
Farmville and Powhatan Railroad from 1891 to 1905, and then on the
Tidewater and Western Railroad from 1905 to 1917. It was also a stop on the
Richmond and Danville Railroad, later renamed the
Southern Railway (U.S.). It was absorbed by the
Norfolk Southern Railway in 1982, which no longer stops in Moseley. In the late 1800s some people would transfer between the two railroads here, although they had separate stations. In 1891, the train did not always stop. Staff used a railroad car on the
Farmville and Powhatan Railroad, to drop off and pick up mail using the
Mail on-the-fly technique. (This car was not designated as a
railway post office. This hook and pouch system allowed crew on the train to drop off and pick up mail without the train slowing. The area was long devoted to agriculture. In the colonial period, tobacco was a commodity crop, a labor-intensive crop that planters cultivated and processed with the use of enslaved African-American workers. Soils became exhausted and mixed crops were introduced in the late 18th and 19th centuries. ==References==