788
VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY
J. B. Ficklen & Sons, merchant millers of
Fredericksburg, and here he remained two
years. Upon the expiration of this time he
removed to Richmond, and there, in 1882,
became the shipping clerk for H. M. Smith
& Company, later going with J. C. Shafer.
In 188S he became a wholesale grocer on his
own account. In 1897 Mr. Moncure and
three of his business associates established
the Richmond Guano Company, of which
he became secretary and treasurer, but in
a few years assumed entire charge of this
successful firm. This business, under Mr.
Moncure's capable management, has grown
from the most modest beginnings until it is
now one of the largest of its kind in the
South. Mr. Moncure's business and finan-
cial associations are many and varied, and
besides the Richmond Guano Company, he
is a director aii^l stockholder in the Rich-
mond Structural Steel Company and Rich-
mond Trust & Savings Company and the
Fidelity Loan and Savings Company. He
was appointed, in 1915, when this system
was organized, by the secretary of the
United States treasury, one of the three
directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of
Richmond, district No. 5, and deputy Fed-
eral reserve agent, the appointment having
been made without solicitation on his part
or his previous knowledge. Mr. Moncure
has been active in public affairs for a num-
ber of years. He is a Democrat, was elected
an alderman for six years on that ticket.
He married, in Richmond, October 28, 1897,
Maria Gray, a native of that place, a grand-
daughter of the late William Gray, a very
successful tobacconist of Richmond, and a
daughter of Herbert and Sue (Flippin)
Gray. Herbert Gray died in 1906, at the age
of fifty-five, and is survived by his widow,
who is now a resident of Richmond. To
Mr. and Mrs. Moncure have been born four
children, as follows: James Ashby, Sep-
tember 15, 1899; Julia Gray, December 15,
1901 : Maria Ashby, September 23, 1903 ;
George V., November 22, 1907. Mr. Mon-
cure and his family are communicants of St.
James Episcopal Church, of which he is a
vestryman. He is a member of the West-
moreland Club and at this writing (1915)
is its vice-president.
Massie Family. The Massie family of Vir- ginia is one of the distinguished old houses of that state, whose name has become in- separably identified with its history and
tradition, and with the stirring record of the
long years of struggle with the wilderness
which resulted in the successful coloniza-
tion of this land of ours, and the no less
bitter conflict with the oppressive powers
ranged against us in the land of our origin,
culminating in the revolution, the birth of
a new nation and the brilliant and inspired
yet painstaking development of the young
republic's institutions during our early days.
As a family, indeed, the Alassies have a
longer history in the old world than in
America, long as is the latter, and may be
traced back to one Hamo de Mascie, who
came to England from Normandy in the
train of William the Conqueror. The name
has been variously spelt during its long de-
scent ; Mascie, Massey, Massy, etc., down to
its present form, preserved with tolerable
uniformity in this country, and in the
Massies of Coddington, a branch of the
family still to be found in Cheshire, Eng-
land. Hamo de Mascie was evidently a man
of considerable importance among the Con-
queror's followers, and was accorded the
overlordship of some ten or twenty cities
after the overthrow of the Saxons and the
establishment of Norman sovereignty in
England. From this time onward, we come
upon the name frequently in the old chron-
icles, and always representing a family of
blood and lineage. One of the most dis-
tinguished men of the name was the cele-
brated General Massie of the civil wars in
England, a son of John Massie and Anne
(Grosvenor) Massie, of Coddington. It is
not the purpose of this sketch, however, to
follow the career of this distinguished line
in England, a very interesting account of
which may be found in Ormerod's "History
of Cheshire." The Massie arms are de-
scribed by Burke in his work on heraldry in
the now almost unintelligible language of
that gentle science, as "Ar. a pile, quarterly
gu. & or. ; in the field quarter a lion pass,
of the field. Crest — Between two trees a
lion salient ar."
(I) The first member of the Massie fam- ily to appear in the new world was Alex- ander Massie, who set sail on the good ship "Primrose" from Gravesend and bound for the colony of Virginia, July 27, 1635. This is according to Hotton's "List of Emi- grants," and is about all we know of this Massie save that a grant of land was made him, or a son of the same name, on Febru- ary 23, 1663, by Sir William Berkeley, the
