Lives Between the Dimensions

ELIZA BERRY AND FAMILY ORIGINS/SOLVING THE ANCESTRY  KEITH RAGAN·WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2018·  FOR ALL MY FAMILY, AND ESPECIALLY FOR AUNT MARY, UNCLE JUNIOR, AND MY BROTHER KEN   It felt like my heart jumped a few inches upward in my chest the first time I was able to make out the defining characters on Eliza Berry Moore’s crude sandstone grave marker. Buried underneath almost 125 years of forest debris, appearing for all practical purposes like just another rock littering the glade where the mortal remains of my Moore ancestors now lay; weathered and barely legible, I made sure it now stood upright once more in the shadowed recesses of the Woolard Cemetery in Wayne County, Missouri.   Just as my brother Ken Ragan and I had felt compelled to find the final resting place of Great-Grandmother Leoto Gardelia Toller Wilson several years before, we were on a quest on this day to find the final resting place of Great-Great Grandparents John Moore and Eliza Berr...

The 2015 Moore Family Reunion was a day of visitation, feasting, and re-telling of family stories experienced on a pleasant 70 degree day in Westside Park in Fenton, Missouri on Saturday, September 12, 2015.  The reunion, an annual event the Saturday after Labor Day each year, drew an about average attendance of the descendants of John William Moore and Eliza Berry Moore of Wayne County, Missouri.  Most attending were direct descendants of their son, Daniel Moore, a Civil War and Plains Wars Cavalry soldier, and his third wife, Susan Ann Tarlton Moore. Daniel and Susan's oldest living grandson at 91 young years of age, the son of Clarence Madison Wilson, SR and Bessie Moore Wilson, Clarence Madison Wilson, JR was there as usual.  He is an inspiration and treasure to all of us.  Also there were Clarence JR's sisters Beverly Wilson Richmann, and Mary Lou Wilson Bazzell.  My own mother, Iva Delores Wilson Ragan, passing on in 1976, was their older sister. ...

The subject of Eminent Domain came up at the last Moore Family Reunion in Arnold, Missouri on September 6, 2014... specifically as to how many acres of land were owned by Daniel Moore at the time of the government seizures.  I had read somewhere of 120 acres, and Uncle Cecil Wilson clearly stated that he felt it had been much more than that.  I knew he was right, but, couldn't get a fix on where I had come up with that figure. Since our next reunion is at Rucker in Wayne County, September 5, 2015, and a visit to the Moore Spring and the old home sites along Wet Fork Creek in the Ojibway Valley, I felt the subject was due some research. I believe we all will have an enhanced appreciation of our sight line from the ridge where Daniel Moore's home once gave shelter to  Bessie,  Ann, and Ted  (Doad), across the creek valley in front in one direction and to the wooded hills in the back as a result of the research.  We can only imagine at the effort and sacrifi...

We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. We felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youths, our hearts were touched by fire."          - Oliver Wendell Holmes, on the young soldiers of the Civil War John W. Moore and Eliza (Elizabeth) Berry Moore were the original hardy souls, leaving the relative tame life of West Tennessee, to enter into the fledgling state of Missouri to the site of what would come to be known as the "Moore Community" in Wayne County, Missouri.  Much is known of the four bothers, all sons of John W. Moore and Eliza Berry Moore that perpetuated the Moore line so prolifically in Wayne County, Missouri.   Their names were Robert Glenn, Daniel, Lewis Doctor, and William Dudley Moore.   But there is more to the family that should be known.   At least twelve children were born to John and Eliza, but only the stories of the four previously named sons are generally known. ...