My Genealogy Hound

Stephen J. Moore, a farmer and stock raiser of Cache Township, Jackson County, is a native of Person County, N. C., and was born March 28, 1829. His parents were Alfred L. and Sarah (Cates) Moore, both born in North Carolina. Philip Moore, grandfather of Stephen J., was a native of New York, and his parents were natives of England. Phillip Moore was a prominent church worker of the Methodist Episcopal denomination, and held many important offices in his county; his father, Stephen Moore, was a veteran of the Revolution, and was second in command of the force that was captured through Arnold’s treason. Philip was a planter and machinist, and, when a young man, went to North Carolina, where he married and reared his family; he built the first horse power threshing machine ever used in that part of North Carolina, and served a long time as surveyor, at which latter work he contracted pleurisy, which terminated his life in December, 1840. Alfred L. Moore was an enterprising and successful planter, of North Carolina, and he and family were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church; the father’s death occurred in August, 1883, and that of his wife in April, 1884, each living to be about eighty-three years of age. Stephen J. is the third child of a family of seven, viz.: William L. (a farmer, teacher, and mechanic, enlisted in the Confederate army in Texas, and met his death at Richmond, Va., in 1804), Caroline (became the wife of A. H. Bumpass, a farmer of North Carolina, and died April 17, 1889, leaving a family of nine children), Rufus R. (was a farmer, who married and had two sons; he served in the Confederate army and was killed in the second battle of the Wilderness, in 1865; his two sons are DeWitt and Rufus, the former now living on the original Moore homestead, and the latter a merchant at Birmingham, N. C.), Susan (is the wife of Henry Foust, a farmer and mechanic, living in Chicot County, N. C.), Sarah E. (married William Moore, a teacher and farmer, of Washington, Hempstead County, Ark.; they have six daughters and one son), and Alfred Dudley (a farmer, of Person County, N. C., having a family of five children). Stephen J. Moore was reared to the pursuit of farming, in Person County, N. C., and at the age of twenty-one engaged in farming for one year in his native State, after which he went to Sumter County, Ala., where he remained three years, going thence to Greenfield, Dade County, Mo., where he turned his attention to the mercantile business for four years. In 1859 he sold out and returned to North Carolina. August 16, 1859, he married Sarah Jane Burton, daughter of Thomas F. and Nancy Burton, natives, respectively, of Virginia and North Carolina. Mr. Burton was a prominent farmer of Alabama and Mississippi. Prior to the birth of Mrs. (Burton) Moore, her parents lived in the Cherokee Territory, afterward moving to Alabama, where she was born March 2, 1835. To our subject and wife have been born seven children, two of whom died in infancy; those living are: Nancy E. (wife of George T. Damerson, a native of Randolph County, Mo.), Fanny (wife of W. H. Wise, a merchant, of Weldon, Ark.), Alfred T. (born March 15, 1868, a graduate of Jones Commercial College, of St. Louis), Margaret J. (born November 28, 1870, attending the school for the blind, at Little Rock, Ark.), Georgia (born January 21, 1873, also attending the blind school at Little Rock). Immediately after his marriage Mr. Moore returned to Dade County, Mo., and the same year went to Texas, where he engaged in merchandising three months, then sold out and went to Kemper County, Miss.; he farmed one year, railroaded one year, and, in April, 1862, enlisted in the Thirty-fifth Mississippi Regiment; he participated in the battles of Corinth, Iuka, Chickasaw Bayou, and all the summer campaign in Georgia; August 26, 1864, he was captured in front of Atlanta, and remained a prisoner of war at Nashville, Tenn., Louisville and Camp Douglas, until June, 1865, when the close of the war set him free. He then returned to his farm, which he worked until November, 1869, when he emigrated to Jackson County, Ark., and bought and settled upon the farm upon which he now resides. He first bought 105 acres of land, very little of which was cleared; he cleared, improved and built, adding to his acres from time to time, until he now owns 235 acres, 120 acres of which are under a high state of cultivation. He votes the Democratic ticket and is a member of the Masonic fraternity. Mr. and Mrs. Moore and family are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, except Alfred, who is a Baptist. The family is highly esteemed by all who know them, and Mr. Moore has done his share toward the support of worthy, public enterprises.