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 spring is an enchanted place for me, nestled on the gentle slope of oak and hickory clad hills in the Southeastern Missouri Ozarks.   It speaks untold stories of drama and everyday life of my Moore and Wilson ancestors.   And I feel their essence and their gentle spirits every time I visit there. I imagine the first person to drink from the spring beside the hill where the house of John W. Moore would come to stand, was virtually naked and drenched with sweat.   The tribal name by which his people called themselves certainly is lost in antiquity.   Hunting big game now extinct, the crisp, coolness of the water probably shocked and satisfied as surely as it still does today. It is staggering when you think about it, how many of our family have found solace and comfort here.   John W. Moore and Eliza Berry Moore and sons arrived just prior to 1850 from Tennessee and whatever reasons for settling in this remote, rocky, place, the spring wou...