THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of Union
County, Georgia
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Four
Moore Families in Union County By 1840
With Christmas holidays and the
New
Year—and yes—the “deep freeze” of these early weeks of January behind
us, it is
time for some serious research to continue on early settlers of Union County.
I have had a request from some
descendants of early Moore
families to seek out what I can find about these family lines. It has not been easy to do, with no
individual Moore
stories submitted to the wonderful book, The
Heritage of Union
County, 1832-1994
about these hardy pioneers. However with
census records, marriage records, and research here and there, I have
pieced
together some interesting information about early settlers with the
surname of Moore.
Moore
was a very common name in both Ireland
and England,
but it seems that in Ireland,
especially, they were known as O’More, O’Moore, and finally, with the
prefix O
dropped, the surname became Moore or More.
Researchers tell us that the surname Moore, in its various forms, ranked
in 20th
place among surnames in Ireland.
It was common in England, as well. Not quite as popular in England,
it
was, nonetheless, a surname frequently heard in that country.
There were no families with the last
name Moore
in
the first 1834 census of Union
County. However, by the second census in 1840, four
households were registered. Even
examining these records carefully leaves us with many questions. We find heads-of-households and constituents
as follows:
In the Abraham Moore family he himself
was listed as between 20-30 years of age, with one male under five and
3
females under five. With no other facts
forthcoming from that census, this leaves us to believe that Abraham
was
perhaps a widower at an early age, with one small son and three small
daughters, all under the age of five.
In the next Moore
household was Joseph as head of
household, and it seems that he, as well as Abraham (Were they brothers? We don’t know.) may have been a widower. In Joseph’s household was himself as head of
household between 20 and 30, one male child under five, another lad
between 15
and 20, and one female listed as between 50 and 60.
Could this older female have been Joseph’s
mother who was living in his household?
And perhaps the male between 15 and 20 was Joseph’s brother, not
his
child, as it is not likely he had a son that old in 1840 since Joseph
himself
was between 20 and 30.
In the Samuel Moore household were
only two persons, Samuel himself listed as between 20 and 30 and a
female
(assumed to be his wife) “15 and under 20.”
In examining the Union marriage records, I find how an error in
last-name spelling was recorded: Samuel
K. Moon (not Moore)
was listed as marrying Naomi Clements on August 25, 1857.
But this marriage, coming seventeen years
after the 1840 census when Samuel and his wife were listed without
offspring,
seems to indicate that Samuel K. Moore was married twice.
A note in the marriage records shows that
“Moon” should have been listed as Moore. One
Andrew Young, Justice of the Inferior Court,
performed the marriage ceremony in 1857 for Samuel Moore and Naomi
Clements.
The fourth Moore
household in Union
in 1840 was headed up by a male “ 30 and under 40” with the unusual
name of
Ransom. I did find a marriage record for
Ransom Moore to Adaline Murray, performed on February 21, 1838 by Jesse
Reid, Justice of
the Peace. This would give us a name for
the “20 and under 30” female listed in
Ransom Moore’s household. Ransom is the
only male listed in his household. But
when we examine the marriage date listed for him and Adaline Murray, we
wonder
about the two females listed—one between the ages of 5 to 10 and
another female
between the ages of 15-20. Since these
children had the last name of Moore,
it makes us wonder about their parentage.
Then in Ransom’s household was a female between 70 and under 80
with the
last name of Moore. We can imagine that she was probably Ransom’s
mother who was, in her dotage, living under Ransom’s roof.
Besides Ransom Moore’s marriage record
to Adaline Murray on February
21, 1838, there is a second marriage of a Moore listed
before 1840. Mary Moore married Nathaniel
Pain (sic;
probably should have been spelled Payne) on December 24, 1839 with
Justice of the Peace R.
W. Roberts performing their ceremony. I
found the household of Nathaniel S. Payne listed in the 1840 Union
census with
Nathaniel between 20 and 30 and the female in his household (his wife
Mary
Moore Payne) between 15 and 20 years of age.
Perhaps more questions than answers
have been raised about these four households of Moores who resided in Union County
in 1840. A total of 19
bearing the Moore
last name were here, 9 males and 10
females. Available records, at best, are
incomplete
and do not give us a concise picture of how some households do not seem
to have
a wife or mother present, as denoted by ages listed for the genders in
this
Moore census. Next week we will examine Moore families
in Union
County
as denoted by the 1850 census. Perhaps
we can begin to piece together a better composite picture of the Moore families
who were
here prior to the Civil War.
To end today’s thoughts, I go back to
Irish poet, Sir Thomas Moore (1779-1852) whom many of you, no doubt,
read about
in your high school or college literature courses (or maybe you’ve
sought out
some of his literary works on your own).
One of his famous poems is “Believe
Me if All Those Endearing Young Charms.”
His poem was set to music and published in “Irish
Melodies” in 1807.
Here are his inimitable words:
“Believe me, if all those
endearing young
charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow, and
fleet in my
arms,
Like fairy gifts fading away!
Thou wouldst sill be ador’d as
this moment
thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it
will,
And, around the dear ruin, each
wish of my
heart
Would entwine itself verdantly
still.”
Like Sir Thomas Moore expressed
for his
love whose beauty fades with time but who still is dear, dear to him,
so we, in
our relentless pursuit of our ancestors and what life was like for
them,
imagine them still young, determined and beautiful as they pursue their
dreams
of a better life and worked to make that dream come true.
c2011 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published Jan. 20, 2011 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA.
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
Updated Nay 23, 2018
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