Born in New York City, Moses Mordecai was the first of Jacoband Judith Myers Mordecai’s six children. When he was asmall child relocated to Virginia, and then moved again before he wasten, settling in Warrenton, North Carolina. Soon after their arrival,Moses’s mother died in childbirth and his father remarried to herhalf-sister; another seven siblings would follow, including brotherAlfred. Although his father worked foryears as a tobacco merchant, he truly found his calling in 1808, atthe age of forty-six, when opened a school, the Warrenton FemaleSeminary. It developed a reputation for being innovative andrigorous, and the family’s love of learning was not lost on itseldest son.
Educated primarilyby his parents, and to a large extent self-taught, Mordecai receivedsome legal training from Judge Oliver Fitts of Warren County, NorthCarolina. In 1807 he obtained a license to practice law in NorthCarolina, he became ciruit-riding lawyer in Nash, Franklin, andNorthampton counties. The following year, he took over Judge Fitts’slaw practice when was appointed attorney general, and Mordecai’scircuit expanded to include Mordecai’s circuit expanded to includeJohnston, Wayne, Halifax, Pitt, and Edgecombe counties, as well assuperior courts in Raleigh and New Bern. In 1811 he accepted aposition as engrossing clerk in the state house of representatives,responsible for editing bills and measures.
By 1812 Mordecaihad also become very involved with freemasonry in Raleigh and was amember of Hiram Lodge No. 40. As his law practice grew, his brotherSamuel guided him in several lucrative investments, and he beganacquiring land and slaves.
On December 9,1817, Mordecai married Margaret Lane atthe home of her grandfather Major John Hinton in Wake County. Withthis marriage Mordecai came into possession of the Henry Lane House,built in 1785 as a wedding gift for her father, who had died in 1797.Outside of what was then the city limits, the house sat in the middleof a three-thousand-acre plantation, where fourteen enslaved peoplelived and worked. Mordecai would expand this property, which wouldcome to be known as the Mordecai House; it still stands and is stillknown as such today, operated by the city of Raleigh.
Mosesand Margaret had two children, Henry andEllen, and when Margaret died, in 1821, he, like his father beforehim, married the sister of his deceased wife. He had one furtherchild by Anne Willis Lane Mordecai.
