Thomas M. Moore Sr. Memoirs

Memories of the Early Life of Mr. Thomas Morgan Moore, SR. as told to Mrs. D. M. McAnnulty - January 1937

My grandfather Morgan came originally from North Carolina. I do not know in just what year he came, but it was by trails the Indians and Pioneers made. He was a great trader of slaves, as men are traders of horses. If he heard of a man who wanted a slave he would either buy one for him, or else trade him one. He always carried with him a Swiss watch that, when a spring was pressed, would strike every quarter of an hour. When traveling he always slept with the watch under his head. He settled a few miles from Michigan City, Miss., his land adjourning Harris Chapel, a Methodist Church. He married Miss Lucy Thompson. Her brother gave me the old silver spoons (I) have and told me to keep them until I married. I have some of them now. My grandfather Morgan was not a great talker, but would sometimes tell me of some of his early experiences. He gave me a pony when I was four, or five years old.

He came to Bolivar once and asked my mother if I could go home with him. She consented and he put me on a pillow on the pony, with a negro boy behind me to hold me on. He then tied the reins of my pony to his horses bridle and we went on that way. I well remember how I loved to stay at Grandpa’s farm and watch what went on there. Sometimes my mother would let me stay a week and even as long as five, or six weeks sometimes. He reared the colored girl who was my nurse, Cornelia Morgan. He gave her to my mother to be my nurse and she looked after me and lived with us until I was twelve or fifteen years old. She finally married Jim McNeal – “one eyed Jim,” to distinguish him from another Jim McNeal (Sp?). She lived in town for years and reared a large family. At last some of her children moved near Booker Washington’s school and she went and lived with them and finally died there.

The first thing I can remember was when I was about three, or four years old. Cornelia would take me sometimes to see old Mrs. Crawford and she would feed me stewed peaches from a little round bowl she always had them in and little cakes. These were small fresh peaches stewed, after being peeled, with the seeds left in them. This Mrs. Crawford was the mother of Mr. Tom Crawford who later came to be called “Uncle Tom Crawford.” We belonged to the Methodist Church and used to sing in the choir when he was an old gray haired man. They lived at the eastside of Water Street just beyond the brick hotel [old Bolivar Hotel].

Cornelia used to take me to the shop of Jim Moore (colored) who had a barber shop on what is now the court house yard, opposite Kahn’s store. He would give me candy to eat. He was called “Jim the Barber” and had belonged to my father, Dr. Thos. Edward Moore. He sold him to Dr. Rufus P. Neely about the time the war came on and later the war freed him. -- My grandfather Moore was a raiser of fine horses and stock. He lived near Huntsville or Florence, Ala. He died there when my father was about thirteen years old. My father was one of eight children – seven boys and one girl. After his death, there was not much money to support such a large family. The children would take “time about” going to school. Part would work while some went to school and vice versa. Finally my father decided he wanted to be a doctor, so he entered the medical school at Louisville, Ky. He did what he could to help himself and his family did everything possible to help him. At last he got his diploma, a regular sheepskin, which he kept in a round tin box with a top on it. I remember well how it looked. I do not know what finally became of it, but suppose it was destroyed during the Civil War.

After my father got his diploma, he and Dr. Taylor, a friend of his started out from Ala. to hunt for a location to settle. They each had a horse and $50.00. They rode through. middle Tenn. And at last arrived here first at the old Nelly farm which was where John Dunnaway now lives. That was a stagecoach station where horses were changed. My father and Dr. Taylor spent the night there and next morning came on to Bolivar and looked over the town. They went on to LaGrange, Tenn. My father then decided to come back to Bolivar, since he liked the looks of the place better than any he had seen. Dr. Taylor went on to Oxford, Miss. where he stayed for seven, or eight years. He then moved to New Orleans, La. where he lived until his death. I saw him about thirty years ago and talked with him.

My father married first a Miss. Joy, mother of my sister Alice Hardaway. She lived only a few years and is buried in the old cemetery by the Community House. Alice lived most of the time with her grandmother Joy. I never lived over six months in the same house with her.

A few years after his first wife’s death, my father met and married Miss Susan Morgan. He met her at Dunlap Springs where she was visiting the family of his partner in medicine, Dr. Peters. I had one brother who died when very young. My father was away at the time and never saw him after he was taken sick, but he always believed the baby got some poison that had been put out for rats and ate it and it killed him. He never told mother however.

When I was young, I never had toys and things at Christmas as children do now. I would hang up my stocking and Santa Claus would bring me oranges and apples and squibs. I never saw a bunch of bananas until I was a big boy.

One day during the war, when I was about six years old, I was standing at Kahn’s corner, a man rode up, jumped off his horse and asked me to hold the bridle. I did so and he went into a store. In just a few minutes he rushed out and said, “You are Dr. Moore’s boy, aren’t you?” I said I was. He said “You run home just as fast as you can” -- “there will be a fight here in just a few minutes.” I took him at his work and “lit a shuck” (colloquial for as fast as a corn shuck would go up in flame if lit). The man was General Forrest. About 100 or 150 of his soldiers were there up on the hill west of town trying to hold back the enemy. Forrest had conscripted a number of men along the way to help hold back the Yankees and was taking them with him. -- At some time during the war, I do not remember just when, there were a number of our soldiers camped in Bolivar. I was just a young boy, but I remember going to their camp with a friend and several of the young negro boys who were my playmates -- We would play we were having a fight and would chunk each other with rocks and dirt.

I was taught at home awhile before I even went to school. The first school I attended was a boy’s academy in what was later Dr. Bob Tate’s home. This building had a cannon ball shot through it during the war. I went there some years. Later a Mr. Hubbard opened a school in a little one-room building where the Central High School now stands. It had four rows of benches and a stage. I went to school there for some years. Later I went away to Sewanee for two years. In the fall of 1874 I went to the University of Va. With Jim Jones expecting to enter school, but before I began my mother grew worse and I was called home and never went to school any more. My mother lived for six, or eight weeks longer and then died of cancer. After I had left Sewanee I went to St. Louis to the opening of a big bridge. I was never in such a crowd of people before. -- I lived with my father in his home, where I was born for a long, long time. -- This house had once been the house where court was held. It was a one-room log building with another log room above with no porch. That was before the first court house (that was burned during the war) was built, or before I was born [Little Courthouse Museum].

It was 1876 that Bolivar had its worst fire -- There were several saloons along where Dun Mask’s store now is, also a post office, which was a little, dark place. There were also other stores I can not recall now. On one terribly cold night, with the wind in the North, fire broke out in some of those saloons. There was no fire equipment here then and the flames swept every thing before them. It burned every thing back of that store to the Bills’ place. The Fernale Academy, the old brick building near Cliffts Cotton gin now, did not burn. There was a very large house, home of the Miller’s just across from the Episcopal Church that burned, but the “dogs” that are the miller’s front now were saved. This fire “broke” several firms in town. There were other fires in Bolivar at other times. The side of the square where the Bulletin office now is was burned several times.

There used to be a brick arch at court house yard near where the Confederate Monument now stands. My father’s office was, at one time, next to it on the east side. Other buildings stood all along the row inside, what is not, the court house yard. -- The house where I now live was built by John Baker, (not family of Sam Baker). He also built the Wright house. -- Kahn’s is the only firm in town that was here then and the Savages, Bills, Millers, Parrans, and Moores about all the families. -- A Cumberland Presbyterian Church once stood where the present church now is. It stood vacant a long time and was finally sold and moved away. I lived here and farmed for three, or four years, then went into the drug business. I thought awhile I wanted to be a doctor and read medicine for a time in office of Moore and Tate, my father advised against it, saying a doctors life was too hard. Dr. Geo. Dorris and Dr. Neely were reading med. In my fathers office about the time I was. I was 33 years old when I married Miss. Mary Tate. She was 21 years. -- I was born on March 5, 1856 [Thomas M. Moore, Sr.].

Per HC Family History Vol II of 2001:

• • Dr. Thomas Edward Moore: b. Aug 18, 1817 in Huntsville, AL d. Mar 10, 1904

1st Marriage: Sept 17, 1846 to Elizabeth Joy who died several years later

They had one daughter Alice Moore (Hardaway):

b. Jan, 1848 d. 1937

Alice married Minge B. Hardaway and had one

daughter Jennie Hardaway who died in 1965?

2nd. Marriage: Mar 20, 1855 Susan Morgan: b. ?

d. Dec 23, 1878

They had two sons...Thomas Morgan Moore Sr. and another son that died when very young.

• Son Thomas Morgan Moore. Sr. (who provided the above story):

b. March 5, 1856 d. 1940?

m. Oct 31,1888 to Mary Lucy Tate:

b. 1867 ? d. June 8, 1931

Thomas Morgan Moore Sr and wife Mary Lucy Tate had three sons:

1. Hugh Tate Moore b. Sept 11, 1889 d. @ 29 in WWI

2. 2. Thomas Edward Moore.: b. Oct 23, 1891 d. @ 19

3. 3. Robert Wood Moore b. Aug 10, 1894 d. Jan 31, 1941