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Simon
Lafayette “Fate” Moore was born in 1844 and was a Baptist preacher who
stood 6 foot 8 inches tall. He was the son of William "Bill" Moore and
Lou Patterson. In 1873, he married 25-year-old, 5 foot nothing, half
Cherokee, Elizabeth Aline Brabston in Jefferson Co, TN. By 1893 Aline had
given birth to 8 children, one of which died in infancy. Three years
later, they decided to GO TO TEXAS , leaving behind their
oldest daughter Mattie Aline who had married a young man named Ivy (we
thought). Not realizing they would never see Mattie again, or ever know
any of her children, they took the six youngest children and joined a
wagon train headed west, making their new home in Fannin County, Texas.
In
1898, the couple left their children with neighbors and went to
Oklahoma to register on the Dawes Rolls. Their application was denied
because Fate didn’t have enough Indian blood and Elizabeth was female.
They returned to Fannin, County where they lived the remainder of their
lives. Aline died in 1927 and Fate in 1944. Both are buried in unmarked
graves at Carson Cemetery in Ector, Texas.
As families do, the
children grew up, married and had families of their own. The oldest
son, Joe died in 1903 leaving Mary Rogers Moore a widow with two small
children. She remarried and the children grew up not seeing much of
their Moore relatives. Alice married Alex Bartley, moved to Memphis,
Texas, and had 10 children. Della married Art Ellison and moved to
Dallas. When Art died leaving her a widow with a small daughter, Della
married David Knight and had two more daughters and a son. Fate and
Elizabeth’s three remaining boys, Will, Tom and Luke stayed in Fannin
County. Will married Lena Chance and had seven children and Tom married
Viola Mitchell and had two sons. Luke married Johnnie Laverne Hudson
and with their five children, made their home in Ector. Travel was
difficult and infrequent in those days and letters were the only
contacts between the siblings.
More than 100 years later the
descendents span six generations. All of Fate and Aline’s eight
children are deceased. Seven of their 23 plus grandchildren are still
alive, and the 100 plus members of the fourth, fifth, and sixth
generations are scattered throughout Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
The
family that started out on a Wagon Train to Texas was reunited August
5, 2000 in Sherman, TX, thanks to the modern technology of the
Internet.
In 1997, I began searching for my grandfather, Luke
Moore’s ancestors, through various genealogy sites on the Internet.
Moore is such a common name I started my search, looking for Brabson
and immediately found a fourth cousin in Detroit who had compiled more
than 300 years of Elizabeth’s family history. There were also several
branches of the Brabson tree with relatives from California to
Virginia. There is a large Brabson Reunion every fall in Knoxville,
Tennessee. Anyone connected to the Brabson’s are invited.
Information
on the Moore family remained elusive, but in September of 1998, Mary
Della Moore Knight’s granddaughter came across a genealogy web site
entitled “Brabston/Brabson.” She had found the same page I had found a
few months earlier. The cousin in Detroit e-mailed both of us and we
exchanged information about each other’s families. We were both
surprised to realize how close we lived to one another. She lives in 60
miles south/east of me.
In May of 2000, Joe’s
great-granddaughter was searching for her roots on the Internet and
typed in the name “Moore” on her browser. A web page popped up that
listed Joseph Moore, son of Simon Lafayette Moore. She had found my
genealogy web page. She phoned her mother, so excited she could barely
talk. The mother e-mailed me and the exchange of information began once
again. We were able to fill in gaps in the family history for each
other. I e-mailed the cousin in Terrell and the three of us got on a
family chat line. Imagine my suprise to learn that she only lived 60
miles east of me.
Plans for a reunion were underway. There
would be three of Fate and Alines's children represented by four
generations of Moores.
On Sunday the 30th of July, one week
before the scheduled reunion, I was once again looking at genealogy
message boards for Moore and there was a request for information on any
relative of Alice Mae Moore Bartley. I responded. After a few e-mails
and several phone calls made by the cousin who made the posting, to her
three sisters, plans were made for the newest found members of the
family to attend the reunion. There were now four of the eight siblings
represented. Thank you World Wide Web. We never could have found each
other if it wasn’t for the far-reaching technology of the Internet.
This
story has a poignant post-script. Various family members of her mother
had raised Della's granchildren, after their parents died. She knew
that her father, Perry Knight had been married before he met her mother
and had a daughter but that was all the information available to her.
Because of a casual comment and a few questions asked at the reunion,
she found a cousin of her sister's, who gave her the sister's phone
number in Virginia and the sisters have since spoken on the phone and
are planning their own reunion. Now the oldest sister has two sisters,
a brother and more cousins than she can count.
Post script #2:
a few months after the reunion the genealogist grandaughter of Della
Moore Knight had another surprise. She knew that her father had been
married after her mother died, but what she didn't know was that the
new wife was expecting a child when Perry and she divorced. This child,
another daughter, found her sister in a genforum posting and now all of
Della's grandchildren have been united. Via the internet, Mattie's
grandchildren have been found and a correction made. She married an Ivy
later in life after her husband, Robert Sterling McNish died. We
thought her children were named Ivy because we had an envelope with the
return name of Ivy.
Fate and Aline's youngest son was Simon
Luke Moore who married Johnnie Laverne Hudson in 1914. Her parents were
John Thomas Hudson and Mollie Campbell Gideon.
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