Moore Genealogy

When I started researching my family history and first same to a point where I was no longer dealing with generations where I had documents with names handed down to me from my grandfather that he got from his sister, it was me working to figure out who Eva Mae “Bornell”’s parents were. At least, that was the name on the transcribed version of Obed Earl Moore’s birth certificate that my grandpa had. Obed Earl Moore was his father, his grandfather was Obed Merill Moore and his wife’s name was actually Eva Mae Bowell. I guess the original handwriting of that name somehow had a “w” that was confusing and looked like “rn”.

After some time researching, I found them in the 1880 census and learned that Obed M. Moore died in 1899 when Obed E. Moore was just a baby. I won’t get into details on that here since this is about the Bowell family line specifically. At some point I came across a portrait of Eva which looks shockingly like my mother, and a photo of her and her sister where she looks so much like my grandfather.

After some time and some really bad math in stating her daughter, Beatrice, was Obed’s daughter even though she was born in September 1903, Eva eventually married a neighbor called David Brown in 1912. So she became Eva Mae Bowell Moore Brown. Really. Once understanding her name was Mrs. Eva Brown, it was easy to find that she is mentioned in her brother Charles M. Bowell’s obituary and it also mentions she was living in Wisconsin. His obituary was published in the Scranton, Pennsylvania area.

It took a while to find her there but she appears in the 1860 census incorrectly enumerated with the first name “Emma,” (if you look at the entire town’s census record she would have been the only Eva but there were a LOT of little girls named Emma, so my guess is the enumerator had some muscle memory of writing that name) along with her sister Estella. In addition, she is enumerated as living in her maternal grandmother’s home – Redessa Sparks Washburn, with the last name Washburn. Her mother, Almeda Diantha Washburn is also in the home as are two of Almeda’s sisters, Electa and Eunice. Conveniently next door is the Bowell family. When I contacted the Susquehanna County Historical Society they said this doesn’t necessarily mean they families actually lived that way, it could have been a number of reasons but the bottom line is that it simply could be who was present in that house at the time of the enumeration not who actually lived there.

After coming into possession of Thomas Bowell’s Civil War Pension file, I am questioning if they did any sort of marriage ceremony at all or just considered themselves to be married yet they were neighbors. Why? Because he wrote on the government’s form that he was married once, to “Diantha A. Washburn” and that no record of that marriage exists to his knowledge. Also, there were two women called Almeda Washburn in the area, one is this one and the other married a man called Thomas Ball. This has lead people to think they are they same people but no, once seeing Find a Grave of their gravesites and extensive documentation of family reunion minutes and other documents from the historical society, it is very clear. The historical society theorized that she used “Diantha” as her name in order to help be distinguished from the other Almeda Washburn who was her second cousin.

So still I needed documentation that directly tied Eva to both parents, and I got them when I received her marriage certificate for when she wed David Brown. Then in the Civil War Pension file of her father, Thomas Bowell, he mentions her name and birthday and that she is his daughter, so that has been put to rest. By the way, David Brown gave random information when acting as the informant of Eva’s death on the death certificate, in regards to her parents’ identities. Honestly made me wonder just how much he cared or was he in such shock she passed; who will ever know?

But now I have questions surrounding Thomas. I’m going to save the rest about him until my next post.

Update! Just now, on her birthday, I have FINALLY found Eva’s obituary! She was mentioned as “Mrs. Dave Brown.” So we not only finally have her obituary but also her burial location for the first time since whatever happened that apparently no one passed down this information. I have made a memorial for Eva Mae Bowell Moore Brown on Find A Grave, as a result of this new information.

This is a follow up to my post about my search for the real Eliza(beth) Moore.

I made the decision to focus my current research on:

1. Contacting as many local resources as I can, to hopefully find information not available online.
2. Compare the 1820 census and 1830 to see who fit the parameters to be a candidate for a Newfane family who lost the head-of-household, had a wife in her 40s and two daughters between 10-19. This is based on seeing a woman in her 50s living in Peter Moore’s home in 1830 along with an additional female in her 20s, while knowing Peter Moore’s parents were both still alive and otherwise accounted for.

I was told today that the cemetery she is buried in is privately owned, and I was provided the owner’s phone number. He said he would look through his records and see if he has any information.

Meanwhile, I have my work cut out for me researching the men who were in Newfane in 1820 but not there in 1830. I am building a tree for Newfane in 1820 to aid in this research.

Update: For the people who lived in Newfane in 1820, the households that fit the parameters above are the following:

1. Anthony Mason
2. Calvin Richinson
3. David Price
4. David Tish
5. Jesse Marsh
6. Jesse Sheperd
7. Lucy Goodale
8. Magalit Alen
9. Oliver Goodrow
10. Phineas A. Pomroy
11. Seth Wheelock
12. Sewil Foster
13. Ward Eager

Would appreciate any tips or ideas!

Update: I heard back from the Williamsville Cemetery owner. He said the headstone is for Peter Moore and then it says Elizabeth and her year of death, but she is the only one buried there. He said it is plot number 38 which is in the old section of the cemetery on the right side of the road, third walkway on the right and that it is a single burial plot next to a large one for the Aldrich family but no indication one way or the other is she is related or not. The records are basically name, gender and year of death.

Update: Heard back from the Moore Free Library. All they have there about the Moore family is a few pages in a book about the library, and that is a different branch than the one I descend from. Referred me to the historical society, which I have now contacted twice but no response yet. Will keep trying.

Before I dive in, a little about me. I was raised “knowing” only a fourth of my family heritage for reasons I may write about later. This got me interested in trying to figure out my family history and, along the way, it turned out that even that fourth I thought I knew was actually more like an eighth. I am an amateur genealogist and I recently learned about the FAN Club method, and I am starting to use it for the ancestor described below but also appreciate any tips and documents that correct or prove any hypothesis. Also, if I have mischaracterized the algorithm discussed below let me know, but my comments about that are based upon my asking about it to a group of much more knowledgeable genealogists.

So, with that understanding, one of the brick wall ancestors in my family tree is Elizabeth, the wife of Peter Moore.

Fact: In all of the records I have seen so far she is only referred to as “Elizabeth,” “Eliza” or “Elizabeth Moore, wife of Peter Moore,” or “Peter Moore’s wife.” Yet, somehow someone started attaching her to the parents Patrick Grimes Graham and Elizabeth McKee and calling her “Elizabeth Graham.” However, each time I look at a tree that has done this, I have seen no documentation to support that claim. This has been going on for years, and unfortunately now perpetuated by well-meaning algorithms because of the sheer volume of trees showing this.

Fact: I contacted the Patrick Grimes Graham Chapter of Clan Graham and was told there is no documentation supporting it. That their Elizabeth Graham only married a man called James Pryor.

Question: If our Elizabeth is not that Elizabeth Graham, then why do I have DNA matches shown to me through that family with this algorithm?

Response: I asked this question to a group of genealogists and the gist of it is that I do relate to those people in some way but because so many people have made this incorrect connection of a family to my ancestor, it is like a well-worn path of least resistance for the algorithm to take to present a theory for how we relate. When in reality, the real connection is through some yet-to-be-discovered ancestral match. In addition, the algorithm doesn’t know who the real ancestors are. We could all change her parents to “Kermit the Frog” and “Miss Piggy,” and other people from other lines could say those are their ancestors too, and then it will start showing everyone these are her potential parents.

So what do we know through documentation about our Eliza(beth)?

Fact: In the Family Data Collection – Individual Records we see that Peter Moore had a spouse called Eliza, and that his parents were Jonadab Moore and Thankful Sargeant, and he was born in Newfane, Windham, Vermont on May 1, 1801.

That has been it, for years.

Then yesterday I reached out to a group of genealogists for help on where else I can look to find her maiden name. They gave me a bunch of ideas, and I am going to go through them the best I can without having to fly to Vermont, and I am going to use the FAN Club research method. Then something amazing happened…

Fact: Within a matter of less than an hour of asking, I was provided with her Find A Grave memorial and death index. So now we know she died in Newfane, Windham, Vermont in November 1849 and was buried in Williamsville, Windham, Vermont. Her death index card was incorrectly transcribed from some other original record as “Eliza Mose,” and “Wife of Peter Mose.” The index card also shows she was 49 when she died and thus was born in (or around, based on the accuracy of whoever reported this information) 1800. I swear I have searched for her with the loosest of location and name variations and never once have I been served these two sources, but here we are!

Fact: In a September 1, 1843 newspaper clipping I found, Peter Moore (now located in Brattleboro, Windham, Vermont) put a notice out stating he had “given his sons their time” and that they were minors named Joseph Grimes Moore and James Darling Moore. He also stated that he declared them “free to act and trade for themselves” and that he would “claim none of their earnings nor pay any of their debts after this date.”

Questions: I believe the middle name “Grimes” is what has led people to try connecting Elizabeth to Patrick Grimes Graham, assuming that the middle name must have been her father’s surname (from what I have read Grimes and Graham were used interchangeably as a surname). But why not assume “Darling” was her maiden name? And why assume a man who used both Grimes and Graham as his surname, yet had no connection to Newfane (Patrick Grimes Graham was associated with Jefferson Township, Pennsylvania, which, since Google Maps can’t calculate the travel time except by car, public transit, bike or walking, looks to be a 27 hour trek by bike) was her father when there is a sizable Grimes family in Newfane at the same time she was there? This is clear in the 1830 census.

Fact: I found that there was an Elizabeth Grimes from that local Grimes family but she died as a small child.

Questions: Could that couple have had another daughter called Elizabeth after their first one died, as many families used to do? Could some other couple in the Grimes family have had an Elizabeth?

Fact: There are 62 trees on Ancestry right now with Peter Moore and Elizabeth in it and many of those are claiming Elizabeth is the daughter of Patrick Grimes Graham and Elizabeth McKee. Most of those show that Elizabeth died in 1825 or 1826 based upon this memorial. We now know that is the wrong Elizabeth’s memorial since we now have our correct Elizabeth’s memorial. We need as many people as possible to remove the wrong parents, death date, etc. from our Elizabeth and attach the correct death-related documents that I linked in this article. Once I added those documents, the Ancestry algorithm stopped proposing Patrick and Elizabeth as her parents to me, maybe a coincidence, maybe not, maybe it needs some time to recalibrate and will again start proposing them to me as a theory. (Update: It has been a few days since I wrote this and still it didn’t revert back to suggesting the mas parents, so yay for the algorithm working to begin understanding this is wrong!) Also, I have taken care of this correction on FamilySearch and left a note with an alert banner. If someone does have records proving that this is Elizabeth Graham, daughter of Patrick Grimes Graham and Elizabeth McKee, then PLEASE correct me by sharing them and also informing his chapter of Clan Graham because apparently no one else has ever seen them.

Questions: Even before we had the correct memorial, with Elizabeth Graham having a death date of 1825-1826, no one has explained how she would have given birth once or twice while being a ghost. Joking aside, even if Peter was married to that Elizabeth (he wasn’t, she was only married to James Pryor) before our Elizabeth and died before any children were born, then why wrongly attribute children to her instead of continuing to look for our Elizabeth? Again, is there some document one person has that started all of this?

Fact: In my research, the Moore family line I descend from seemed to pick surname-sounding middle names that had nothing directly to do with the family. I descend from Obed Morell Moore, one of his sons is named John Wheaton Moore. I have so far found zero link to any Morell or Wheaton families from the Moore line or their wives’ lines. We see Peter and Elizabeth’s sons both have middle names that could be surnames yet neither are found to be surnames on Peter’s side, so why should one of them be Elizabeth’s? At this point, I am giving as much weight to the “middle name theory” in my search as I am giving any other theory. I have also come across many people using the middle name to make their child’s name an homage to a hero of the parents, like someone naming their child “Alexander Hamilton {surname}” doesn’t mean “Hamilton” is a family name.

Fact: I mailed a request to the Vermont State Archives to search for a marriage record of Peter Moore and Elizabeth and received a response that there is no record from 1760 through 1870 (well before and after their lives) of the marriage in the archive.

Question: Do we know what their religion was? I haven’t found that answer so far and will need to research it more. Perhaps there is a church record since there is no government record.

Elizabeth’s Documented Timeline

Assuming the documented information is correct on her burial and death index, and assuming she was the mother of both James and Joseph.

1800 – Born

1825 – Son James Darling Moore is born

1827 – Peter, his father Jonadab, and his brother Jonathan sign a document petitioning for the widow of Abner Perry (page 163) to get a pension for his service during the Revolutionary War. I have found no other people they have done this for.

Question: Could Elizabeth be a member of the Perry family in Newfane or a neighboring town? I tested out seeing if she is Elizabeth Perry (born in 1802 to Stephen Perry and Priscilla Robbins) and that has been inconclusive for me so far because there isn’t much out there about Elizabeth Perry either. Seeing the memorial for our Elizabeth says 1800 and she was 49 also has me feeling I should keep looking because that would be the first time I would hear of a woman making herself older. But of course, this is in the margin of error, especially since we don’t know who reported her death, so I am not writing this off of my list of candidates.

1829 – Son Joseph Grimes Moore is born

1830 – Census shows Peter Moore in Newfane, Vermont with a total household size of seven people. Three boys under five (perhaps a third son who didn’t make it to 1843), one male between 20 – 29 (himself), two females between 20 – 29 (perhaps the third boy was the second lady’s son, and not a third son of his and Elizabeth’s) and a female between 50 – 59 (likely a grandma to the boys).
Update: I have started comparing the 1820 census of Newfane to see who died before 1830 and had a household of at least one woman in her 40s, and two girls between 10-19. Will update here when I am done.

1835 – In a Vermont Supreme Court (page 363) case regarding Peter’s escaped sheep being taken to the pound by a neighbor, Joshua Robbins, in 1834, it mentions he had a wife and that he lived in Newfane.

Question: Did they divorce or separate during this time? Why did he move to Brattleboro at some point after this case and she died in Newfane? Could the lawsuit against Joshua Robbins have been part of any marital issues? Could she have been part of the Robbins family and upset with Peter’s determination to drag on the court case? Recall that if she is Elizabeth Perry, then her mother would have been Priscilla Robbins. How does Joshua relate to Priscilla?

1837 – Newspaper clipping that a letter is in the post office of Brattleboro for Peter “Moors.”

1839 – The State House of Vermont (appendix) lists that Peter Moore and Luke Taylor owe the state treasurer $50.

Question: Who was Luke Taylor? Could he have been a relative of Elizabeth and then she would be, dare I say, Elizabeth Taylor? Update: No Elizabeth in the family.

1843 – Newspaper clipping I previously mentioned from Peter Moore about sons James and Joseph, mentions he is in Brattleboro, Vermont.

1849 – Died in Newfane, Vermont

1851 – Peter is murdered and the newspaper mentioned he was a boarder in Brattleboro and an “American of not very good character.”

Fact: I have emailed the Moore Free Library and submitted a search request form to the Historical Society of Windham County. I have asked both if they have any resources available to determine Elizabeth’s identity and if they happen to have anything that would explain the negative character comment about Peter. Will update either way with their responses. Maybe this will bring more color to their relationship, if they did divorce and other names to research for her.

Questions and Documents Remaining:

1. Elizabeth’s parents, place of birth and birthdate. Possible birth or christening records.
2. Possible church record of Elizabeth and Peter’s marriage. I have emailed Newfane Church to ask them if they have records back that far. The church opened in 1839. Update: The church said they do not have records back that far but that they may exist somewhere.
3. Peter’s land deed with the county clerk. One genealogist mentioned that many times a member of the wife’s family would sign as a witness in order to protect her dower’s rights. I have emailed the Town Clerk to see if they have records back that far.
   Update: They do not have it but forwarded my email elsewhere and I haven’t heard anything yet.
4. Any possible probate records for Elizabeth’s family members mentioning her name, “Mrs. Elizabeth Moore” or “wife of Peter Moore.”
5. Possible church records or indexes for the birth or christening of James and Joseph. One genealogist mentioned that many times family members were the christening sponsors listed.
   Update: The church said they do not have records back that far but that they may exist somewhere.
6. Possible record of their divorce or separation, if that did happen.
7. Peter’s death record, grave site, memorial.
8. Possible obituary for Elizabeth.
9. Why was she buried in Williamsville instead of the town she died in? Could that be where she was from? Could her family be buried there? Who is she buried near?
10. Possible obituary or death records for either or both of their sons.
11. Did the local Grimes family who had a daughter called Elizabeth (who died as a young child) then have a second daughter they called Elizabeth?
12. What was Abner Perry’s widow’s maiden name? Perhaps Elizabeth was from that lady’s family.
13. Was there an “Elizabeth Robbins” in any local town?
14. If this is Elizabeth Robbins, how does Joshua Robbins relate to Priscilla Robbins?
15. Was there an Elizabeth Taylor in any local town?
    Update: I found a genealogical record for this branch of the Taylor family and no Eliza(beth) in it.
16. What other Elizabeths were born around 1800 and were in the area and do not have documents or memorials proving to be someone else?
17. Anything I am missing? Let me know!

I have also emailed the Vermont State Reference Archivists to see if there are any documents at all that could help.
Update: They responded they didn’t find anything.

Thank you to Diane for the encouragement to keep going with my research and to start a blog!