John Moore Revisited - Part 2

In my last post, we once again picked up John Moore, the father of Jacob Blackshear's wife, Judith, with the idea that we were going to trace his line further back.  After spending more than a month looking through old records, I must say that I am finding this particular mystery to be the most challenging so far.  Most of the posts I've done simply involved finding documents and throwing them up for you all to see.  I just used what I had with a little bit of historical research to try and create a picture of what each ancestor's life was like.  

Sure, we had a few things to figure out, like birth and death dates, places of residence and years of moves, and family relationships.  Some, like the date of Amelia Virginia Blackshear Cheatham's death, were solved with absolute certainty by finding a newspaper article with the information we needed.  Most of the time, though, we weren't so lucky and had to settle for a small date range for births, deaths, and moves.  Some mysteries remain yet unsolved, but with the hope that taking a little research trip or getting access to locked documents will give us the information we need.  This would be the case for those five years where Amelia Virginia disappeared from the records and then mysteriously showed up a hundred miles away with no trace of her family alongside her, or the two year range between the evidence of W.C. Cheatham in New Mexico and the time when he showed up in the Duncan area.  There are other mysteries, though, that I have completely dropped as unsolvable, like the maiden name of Amelia Virginia's mother or what her father's middle initial actually stood for.  

I don't yet know if we are going to be able to figure this one out.  We have  a ton of leads to follow, a ton of documents to look through, and a ton of circumstantial evidence that we are going to have to decide whether to accept with confidence or deem too sketchy for use in drawing conclusions. But even if we don't determine who John Moore's father was, at least we will have gotten a bit more insight into his life.  (Actually, I am starting to think this should be the primary focus of this post, and if we solve the mystery it will be icing on the cake.)

Before I begin, though, I would like to say a couple of things.  

First, some of you might be wondering why we are even talking about this obscure branch of our family tree.  Well, why do we talk about the Langstons or Fosters or Owens or Willsons?   (Okay, so we don't really talk about the Willsons, but some day I'll get there and we will!)   Just because we are more closely related to some of those women and their male relatives, either actually knowing them or holding stories told by those who did, or maybe because some of those women have fantastic stories about being Revolutionary War heroines or something, doesn't mean the lesser-known female branches should be ignored.  If I said to you that our so-and-so branch had been on the Mayflower, even if nobody even knew we were related to them because one of their daughters just so happened to marry into one of our lines two hundred years ago, I bet you would be curious.  I bet you would say, Oh?  Tell me more.   I think it is a shame that Amelia Virginia died before she was able to pass any of her family history stories along, which is why I am working to fill things in for that line.  And who knows, maybe we'll discover that our distant Moore ancestors have a great story that we will want to include in our family history narrative as well.

(Come to think of it, the fact that Judith Moore was a Quaker appears to have had quite the impact on the course her descendants would take - her son Jacob, the grandfather of Amelia Virginia, never owned any slaves, even though his brothers and cousins did and in fact became quite wealthy from their slave plantations.  Amelia Virginia's father, Silas, never owned slaves until after his mother's death, and then only two - apparently belonging to his wife.  Our Blackshear branch, then, ended up being rather poor Southern farmers, instead of the wealthy elite like their cousins one county over in Texas.  See?  Every line of ancestors is important to our story!)

Second, I have spent many, many months researching colonial North Carolina since I wrote that first post about John Moore.  I now have a much better understanding of all things related to that time and place, so I will probably have to clarify and correct a few of the things that I said in my original post about this branch of the family.  

And third, I have collected a considerable number of documents relating to John Moore and his possible relations.  Unfortunately, my working memory isn't what it used to be, so the amount of information that I can hold in my mind at one time is limited.  This means that it is really hard for me to synthesize numerous pieces of evidence and draw conclusions from them.  Once my brain is full, if I want to pick something new up, something else gets dropped - kind of like a juggler who has tried to add too many balls!  So, if while reading this post, you find yourself scratching your head and saying what is she talking about?!, please send me an email and tell me what I am missing or where my reasoning has gone awry!

Okay then, let's get started.  I've been debating with myself about how to actually do that.  I honestly can't figure out a way that makes sense, so how about we try the jigsaw puzzle approach. (I actually just made this up.  My nieces and I always have a puzzle in progress and I think this makes a good analogy.)  We'll start with a framework (the puzzle border) and then we'll pick up a random piece and see where we can fit it in.  This might turn out to be a disaster, but here goes . . . 

After I wrote my original post about John Moore/Moor/More (Did you read it?  If not, you can find it here), this is what I knew:

1. John was married to a woman named Mary.  

2. The family was living in Mattamuskeet, Hyde County when they joined the Quakers in August of 1781.  They had moved to Jones County by 1789.  

3. John died in Jones County in the spring of 1792.

4. John and Mary had six children.  The oldest was married in 1782, and the youngest turned 21 sometime during the year 1792.

5. John first showed up in the land records of Hyde County in 1766.  

6.  John had a close relationship with his son-in-law, Malachi Jolley, who was also from Hyde County.

Now, here are a few things about the North Carolina Moore lines that I've learned since then:

1. The Moores in Perquimans County, though also Quakers, do not seem to be closely related to our John. 

2. The Moores in New Hanover and Onslow counties are descended from the famous Roger and Maurice Moore, who came to North Carolina in the early 1700's.

3. The Moores in Craven County are descended from a Mohr who settled there in 1710.  It is possible that some of the later Moores were also related to the New Hanover or Beaufort Moores, since Craven county is located between the two.

4. The Moores in Beaufort County seem to have some connection to the neighboring Hyde County Moores.  Both Roger and Maurice held lands in the area prior to 1720, but removed to southern North Carolina after that time.  It is still unclear whether the Moores residing in Beaufort during the 1720's and 1730's (and thus later also) were their relatives or an unrelated branch.

5. Other Moores in Hyde County include:

William - records dating 1741 (taxes) - 1781 (death)
Roger - record dated 1754 (deed)
Henry - records dating 1780 (deed) - 1798 (will)
Frances & John (son of Henry) - records from 1780's - 1800's

Okay.  So that's the border of the puzzle.  Let me throw a map up one more time to refresh your memory:

1808 Price-Strother Map of North Carolina

I chose this map because it is much closer to the time we are going to be talking about but actually looks to be uncommonly accurate.  (I'll be putting up at least one earlier map and it is really bad!)  If you click on the map title you will be able to enlarge the map and get a closer look.  Right there, in the middle and to the right, is Hyde County (pink) with Beaufort (green) to the left.  Below Beaufort is Craven (pink), and below and to the left is Jones County (yellow).  At the bottom center is Carteret County (green), which is where John and his family attended their Quaker monthly meetings.  If you enlarge the map, you will see Core Creek nearly at the very bottom above the town of Beaufort (not to be confused with the county).  Now you can really see why I said in my earlier post that they probably travelled down there by boat.  I read recently that it could take up to an entire day to cross Albemarle Sound, and the distance from Hyde to Core Creek is much farther, so they had quite the trip to take every month.

At the very bottom left of the map is New Hanover County.  I would also like to point out that Pitt County (yellow) was a part of Beaufort until 1760, and the eastern section of Hyde, including most of the Mattamuskeet area, belonged to Currituck County (top right of map) until 1746.  

Since we are talking about moving around from place to place, let's pick up a puzzle piece and talk for a minute about John and his family's move to Jones County.  I originally knew that they had made the move by 1789 because, as I mentioned before, John bought land that year and he was named as a resident already.  Here is a copy of the deed:

John Moore (from Benj. Stanton Jr.)
June 1789 
Jones County, NC
Deed Book 1, Pg. 448-449

So here we see that John bought 360 acres of land spanning both sides of the Trent River.  When I read this back in 2020, all I really noticed was that the portion south of the river bordered Elisha Blackshear's land.  Of course, that was super exciting because it helped prove that we had found Jacob Blackshear's wife.  I didn't even notice that John Moore was buying a huge chunk of land.  But now I am wondering, if he was already a resident of Jones County, but this was his first land purchase there, then where was the family living?  Were they already leasing all or part of this same parcel of land?  We know that Alexander Blackshear was in possession of his own land long enough that he had built multiple houses on it.  So maybe John was leasing a house and a portion of the land.  Or maybe Benjamin Stanton Jr. had other pieces of property and wasn't living on these ones at all.  That's actually probably more likely because this deed says that he barely purchased the land from Charles Sanders seven months earlier.  Which brings me to another thing - there was a bridge over the river there called Sanders Bridge.  Later deeds would call that bridge Quaker Bridge, I'm guessing because it was right by the acre of land that John later gave to the Society for their meeting house and graveyard.  (You can read the deed by going back to my original John Moore post.)

Oh, and now after reading this deed I have the answer to something else I always wondered about - when these surveys are always marked by trees, what happens when the tree dies or gets chopped down?  Well, apparently when there is "a tree which is rotten and gone" they just have a "post-put-instead."  Huh.  That makes a lot of sense!

Now, while we are talking about this 1789 deed and where John was living, let's see if we can fit in the puzzle piece that tells us exactly when they moved to Jones County.  It turns out that this actually takes a few pieces.

First:  The 1786 North Carolina state census.  We have a transcription of the census records from both Hyde and Jones counties.  It appears that the originals either are gone, or just have not yet been made available; I'm crossing my fingers that it is the latter and someday soon we'll be able to look at them.  

I'm not going to put the census record up just yet, because we are going to be talking about it in depth in a few minutes.  I will tell you, however, that there is a John Moore in the Mattamuskeet district of Hyde County in 1786.  Now, Ancestry calls the census 1784-1787, because I guess the counties had three years to get the thing done.  If we look closely at the Hyde County pages, we see that they are divided into geo-political sections, and that each was returned to the courts separately.  Two of the lists are dated 1786, one is dated January of 1786, and six are dated February 1786.  This tells us that, in about February of 1786, our John Moore was still living in Hyde County.  The Jones County census is dated 30 September 1786, and there is no John Moore listed.  So the family moved some time between September 1786 and the first half of 1789.  

I didn't think I was going to be able to narrow this down any further, but then I found this entry in the Hyde County court minutes:

Hyde County Inferior Court minutes
February Term 1787

(This is my colorized version.  If anyone wants the original, full-page black and white, just let me know!) 

Here we see that John Moore of Jones County was going to have to give a deposition and also show up in court to testify.  I read the minute books through 1792 and didn't see another reference to this case, but then I remembered that I had found a transcription about this very case online ages and ages ago:

New Bern District Court Civil Actions - Box 3 

This shows that the case made it to the District Court, and that John Moore did indeed testify.

Anyway, the court minutes up above tell us that he was already a resident of Jones County by February of 1787, which means that the family had moved sometime during the preceding four months.  Cool.  A four month date range is waaaay better than three years!

Okay.  Now we'll look at the 1786 state census record that I mentioned above.  This is where things start to get tricky, because there were actually two John Moores shown in Hyde County, a senior and a junior, which we know did not necessarily mean father and son, but jut the elder and younger.  Here is the page for John Moore Sr.:

North Carolina State Census 1784-1787
Hyde County

(Since this is a transcription, we will have to hope that it doesn't have any errors in it.)  John Moore is over in the middle of the right-hand column, but I am showing just the top half of the whole page so you can see that this is the list for the Mattamuskeet district.  That's where our John was living, so when I first found this I assumed I'd found our guy.  This shows that John Moore Sr. was himself either between the ages of 21 and 60, or over 60 years old.  If in the younger range, he would have had two boys or one boy and an older man in his household.  If he were himself in the older range, he would have had one boy and one additional man (younger than himself) in his household.  Either way, there is one too many males for the information that we know about this family.  Could there have been another son that we don't know about?  One who did not join the Quakers with the rest of the family?  Possibly.  Could John's elderly father or his elderly father-in-law have been living with them?  That is a possibility as well.  However, if it were John's father, he should have shown up in some records at some point, and the only two older Moores who can be found in the Hyde County records were both deceased by this time.  So if it was an older man, it would have had to have been Mary's father instead.

Let's look at the females in his household now.  This shows that there was a total of four females in the household.  This could have been John's wife Mary and his three younger daughters: Sarah, Amelia, and Judith.  This only works, however, if the census taker recorded this list before February 5, 1786, because that is the date of Amelia's marriage.  I think this is possible, since one district was dated January, and even though the majority were dated February, all of those actually say they were returned to Hyde County Inferior Court in February and they are signed next to the date with the name of the county clerk, not the census taker.  So, if the clerk presented them to the court in the February term, they were most likely created in January.  And we know they were not made any earlier than that, because even the ones that are not dated with a month are dated with the year 1786.  

I think John Moore Sr. sounds like the right one, don't you?

Well, let's look at John Moore Jr., and make sure we can rule him out:

 

The younger John Moore was also on the lists for Mattamuskeet district, so we can't discount him right away.  This shows that he also could have been between the ages of 21 and 60, or over 60 years old, and that there was a male in his household that fell into the opposite category from himself.  Since we know that his son, Gideon, was under 21 at the time, if this was our John Moore, he would have had to have been under 60 years old.  This John also had three females in his household, which would only be accurate if the information was recorded after Amelia was married on February 5th.  (It's just our luck that she got married in exactly the same month, isn't it?)   I went back to the court minutes and checked the page for February Term of 1786 and it was dated the 27th of the month, so that would have given three weeks after Amelia's wedding for a procrastinating census taker to get this done.  

This John, however, had two "blacks" in his household.  Our John was a Quaker by this time, but since it was very difficult to free slaves in colonial North Carolina, it is possible that these were slaves that he had had for years and just treated as if they were members of his family.  However, John didn't leave any slaves in his will.  Of course, he might have sold any slaves before or after his move to Jones County and we would never know, because that type of bill of sale is rarely recorded in the regular deed books, and although they do show up from time to time in the court records, as we will see, those are very patchy.  Many North Carolina Quakers actually transferred ownership of their slaves to the Society, and then the former slaves continued to live in their household, so in those instances they should still show up as "blacks" under a head of household on the census.  This means that we can't rule John Moore Jr. out solely on the basis of having members of his household who show up in the same category as slaves.

So now we have to ask ourselves - is it more likely that our John Moore had slaves/former slaves and a possible extra female in his household (which could have been his or his wife's mother), or that he had an extra male, either young or old in his household instead?  I don't really know.

I do know, however, that there was a Henry Moore living in Hyde County at the same time:

Since we are trying to determine who our John's father was, and we can sometimes do this by establishing other family relationships, we should pay attention to this Henry, since he was one of the only men in the county with the same last name.  This shows that he was either under or over 60 years old, and that he had five sons still at home.  (The one female would have been his wife, since, as you will see, his "will" mentions his wife but not a daughter.)  

In November of 1798, Henry transferred land to his three sons, Henry, James, and Thomas.  In another deed with the same date, he transferred all of his moveable property upon his and his wife's death to his "other two sons" John and Lemuel (except something was going to Thomas - I couldn't read what it was saying).  Could the John Moore Jr. have been the son of Henry?  If so, then there was one additional male who we cannot identify in Henry's household when this census was taken.  

Four years later, the 1790 U.S. census for Hyde County recorded a Henry Moore with five sons still at home, two at least 16 years old and three under 16.  I wanted to see if there was a John Moore on that list, since he would no longer be the younger but the only one (since our John had moved to Jones County), but when I pulled the census up on Ancestry, there was only one page for Hyde County and the final tally page wasn't there, so - once again - missing pages are keeping us from finding definitive answers!  (Update:  Before I did my final proofreading of this post, I was able to find the 1790 census on a different website, and wouldn't you know, those other Hyde pages weren't really missing.  Something was just messed up on Ancestry.  So, I found someone that might have been John Moor - the last name was really hard to decipher - not listed as a senior or junior, who had 1 male 16 or older, 1 male under 16, and 3 females, which is exactly what John Moor Jr. had in his household four years before.  The only difference is that in 1790 he reported no slaves.  So, if the last name of this person was Moor, it's looking more and more like John Moore Sr. was our John Moore.)

Anyway, getting back to Henry, it is possible that there was another son who disappeared (either by moving or dying) in the eight years between the 1790 census and his pseudo-wills in the deed book.  

I would like you to take a look back up at this state census list for Henry, though.  Do you see the name eight names down from Henry?  Sarah Cording.  And two names below her . . . Ann Adams.   Both of whom lived in the same district as Henry.  Now take a look at this will: 

Last Will and Testament of William Moore
Hyde County, NC
(1775/1781)

This is a transcription of the will of William Moore, found in the will book of Hyde County.  William Moore began appearing in the records of Hyde County in the early 1740's, which makes him a likely candidate to be John Moore's father.  In this will, William named his daughters, Sarah Cording, Ann Adams, and Catherine Abrams.  He also named a grandson, William, and a son . . . John.

Wait! Before we go any further, go grab yourself a cup of coffee (I have mine) or some Focus Factor or something, because we are going to be doing some juggling with a whole lot of puzzle pieces now.

Okay.  This will was written in 1775, but it wasn't proved in court until May of 1781.  Initially, I found no evidence of this namesake grandson.  I wondered if this could have been the extra male in John Moore's household, or the extra male in Henry Moore's household.  Or, I thought it could have been someone already grown and living in the neighboring Beaufort County.  A William Moore does indeed begin to show up in the Beaufort records during the last two decades of the 1700's, implying that he was of a younger generation.  Of course, that guy could have been a nephew or cousin of a Hyde County Moore instead (I'm almost positive that some of the Moores in both counties are related, though).  

But wait again!  When I finally found those "missing" pages of the 1790 census for Hyde County, lo and behold, there was a William Moor as a head of household with a son and one female, which means he could have been a relatively young man, and thus this elusive grandson.  There are no surviving deeds showing that he bought or received any land in Hyde County, but as you will soon see, that doesn't really mean anything.  This William was probably either the extra male we see in 1786 in John's or Henry's household.  If he was in John's household, it would mean that John did indeed have another son we are not aware of, who chose not to follow the family to Jones County, and who died before John wrote his will in 1792.  (Since John left his daughter Judith, who had been disowned by the Quakers for marrying a non-member, the same inheritance as his other daughters, he does not seem like the kind of man who would refuse to leave an inheritance to a son who chose not to join the group in the first place.)  If William was the extra male in Henry's household, he would have had to have either received his inheritance early, or died or moved away between the 1790 census and the time Henry portioned out his estate to his sons in 1798.  I don't know if we will ever figure out what father he actually belonged to.  

We also don't know who the mysterious Ann Moore who witnessed the will was.  She could not have been William's daughter Ann, because she was already married when the will was written.  That means that she had to have been the wife or daughter of one of William's sons, or maybe a niece or something.  We know that our John had a wife named Mary and no daughter named Ann.  Unless . . . . . she died between her court appearance in May and the family's request to join the Quakers in July.  I hate to rely on something so specific, but it is possible.  You can see in the court minutes that men of all ages seemed to be dying left and right in Hyde County during the second half to the 1700's, so it is likely that people of all ages were as well.

Now, I know right now some of us might be saying, Now hold on - we can't just be adding people to John's family.  The Quaker records show us exactly who his children were.  But we must remember: One document does not a genealogical record make.  Take for example our family story of W.C. and Amelia Virginia Cheatham.  If all we looked at was the 1880 census, we would think that Dee was their first child, but the family Bible confirms that there were three older children, all under the age of six, who died within in a two-month time span in 1876.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make is throwing out documents that don't fit the "facts" as they know them.  I did this with W.C. Cheatham, remember?  I threw out the New Mexico newspaper articles referring to "Judge Cheatham" because that couldn't possibly have been our guy (who was a simple farmer), only to discover later that W.C. was indeed the (one and only) Justice of the Peace in the town of Capitan at exactly the same time the newspaper articles were written!  (I then went on to discover other newspaper articles that confirmed that he did indeed do what the other articles said he did.)

As we investigate the life of John Moore, we have to evaluate all of the genealogical evidence, which includes the census records, deeds, and wills relating to John and other Moores, not to mention, other Quaker records.  The entry that shows John and his family becoming official members of the Society of Friends does not even show that Michal was his daughter.  That information has to be extrapolated by seeing that she joined the Quakers shortly before the rest of the family, that she married Malachi Jolley, that John, Mary, and Sarah Moore were witnesses to her marriage, and that a grandson named John Jolley was mentioned in John Moore's will.  Without combining the information from four different records, we would have no "proof" that Michal was John's daughter.  

So let's remember to keep an open mind while we delve into these records.

Okay.  The other possibility is that Ann was the wife or daughter of Henry.  As we've already noted, it doesn't appear that Henry had a daughter.  Although, it just now occurred to me that it could have been his daughter who died - or got married! - between her 1781 court appearance and the 1786 census.  But why would Henry Moore's wife or daughter be witnessing the will of William Moore?  Perhaps Henry was another son of this William.  He is not mentioned in the will, but maybe that is because he had already received his inheritance.  

As for the idea that Ann was a niece, there is no evidence of any other Moores old enough to be her father living in Hyde County at the time.  I suppose she could have been a ward of William, but then don't you think he would have left her something in his will?  I guess it is also possible the she was a spinster sister of William.  (I thought the wife of Henry sounded the most plausible, but the more I think about it, the more I like the spinster idea!)  

Of course, this Ann could have been the wife or daughter of an entirely different John Moore who was actually the son mentioned in William's will.

William names his son John as one of his executors, and I was able to find this in the court minutes:

Hyde County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions
May Term 1781

I was kind of hoping that we would get a little bit more information from this, but alas, no.  We can discover, however, that this does not call John a senior or a junior, and it does not say that he was from someplace else, say, like Beaufort County next door (this will be relevant later).  Also, this John came to court to have the will proved with the inventory already completed, which I have never seen happen, ever.  So if this was indeed our John, we can feel proud that he was such a responsible man!

Now, it just so happens that there was a John next door in Beaufort County who might have been the son of William instead, but we are going to have to wait to investigate that because we need to finish talking about this census record.

William's daughters Sarah and Ann had both been widowed by 1786, which is why they appear as the heads of household on the census.   And if any of you read my original post about John Moore recently as a refresher, you might remember that he named a niece, Dorcas Spring, in his will, and I said maybe that bit of information would help us find his family.  Well, just above Henry Moore on the census list is Dorcas Gilbert.  Now, I don't think this is the Dorcas in question, but it did remind me to talk about this.  While reading the deed books and court records, I noticed something.  It turns out that Dorcas was a surprisingly common name in Hyde County at the time.  I only came across one Penelope and one Mourning,  but tons of Sarahs, Elizabeths, Anns, and strangely enough, Dorcases.  I tried looking for links between Dorcases and Springs, and here is what I discovered:

1784 - Thomas Cording and wife Dorcas sold 100 acres on the west side of the Pungo River to Elizabeth Spring.  

1784 - Elizabeth Spring also sold to Thomas Cording at the same time, 150 acres formerly belonging to John Spring.  (I discovered this in the court minutes.  This deed is not listed in the index, but I was able to find it in a deed book by looking at the pages after the other one.  Just one more reason to read the entire collection of deeds.)

1785 - Thomas Cording, the son of Joseph Cording, and wife Dorcas sold four acres.

1792 - Thomas Cording and his wife Dorcas sold 150 acres on Sinclair's Creek, below the town of Woodstock, formerly belonging to John Spring.  (Sinclair's Creek was on the west side of the Pungo River, somewhere south of Matchepungo/Pungo Creek.)

---------

1764 - Joseph and Sarah Cording sold 100 acres on Matchepungo Creek.  

1785 - Joseph Cording died intestate (without a will).  Records show that Joseph and Sarah Cording had nine children at the time of his death: Thomas, William, Benjamin, Joseph, Daniel, John, Sarah, Hosea, and one not named.  Two 200 acre tracts of land on the west side of Pungo Creek were left in Sarah's possession. 

---------

1747 - William Moore purchased 100 acres at the head of North Dividing Creek.

1754 - William Moore contributed to a bond with William Cording, so that Benjamin Martin could take into custody the orphaned brothers of William Cording, Joseph and Benjamin Cording.

In case you aren't quite seeing the connections, the Matchepungo and Pungo names were used interchangeably.  Here is a map if any of you want to visualize what we are talking about:

1808 Price-Strother Map of North Carolina
Hyde County, Pungo River Area

If you click on the title, you will be able to enlarge this nice, high-resolution map so that you can read the place names.  What you will discover, is that all of these land transactions took place in the same general area.  (The exact location of Sinclair's Creek is open to debate - this map shows it by the x to the far left, on the pink marking the border of Hyde.  The x to the right of that is now called "St. Clair Creek," which could be a corruption of the original name.  Neither of these is "below the town of Woodstock", though, so maybe there were multiple small creeks named for various members of the family over time.)

Of course, the locations where people held land is not the only connection you are supposed to be seeing.  I think it is clear from the evidence that Sarah Cording, the daughter of William Moore, was married to Joseph Cording.  Sarah's son, Thomas, was married to a woman named Dorcas.  There was some connection between these two and the Spring family.  They certainly were neighbors.  If our John Moore was the brother of Sarah Moore Cording, then Thomas Cording would have been John's nephew.  Perhaps Thomas and Dorcas had a daughter, also named Dorcas, who married a Spring, which would result in a great-niece of John Moore named Dorcas Spring.  

Oooh.  Wait.  John also named another niece, Anna Spring, in his will, which means that either these two nieces of his were unmarried, or that they married a pair of brothers with the last name Spring.  So here is a possible scenario:

Maybe the unnamed child of Sarah Moore Cording was female, and she married a Spring.  There was an Elizabeth Spring who was widowed in 1782. (This is undoubtedly the Elizabeth we see making the land transactions above.  Maybe she was actually a daughter of Sarah's.)  Her husband's will named six children, but on the 1786 census she had eight people besides herself in her household.  Perhaps she was pregnant when her husband died and did not realize it yet.  Okay, so this theory would require her to have had twins, which is possible, even if not very likely.  So, maybe she had some grandchildren living with her.  But . . . she does not appear on the 1790 census, meaning she had probably passed away by then, and making it likely that she left behind some minor children . . . .   

In case you are wondering why I have suddenly started speculating about orphaned children, take a look at this:

1790 U.S. Census
Jones County, NC

This is a snippet of the 1790 Census.  In 1790, John Moore was living in Jones County with his family.  You can find him over there at the very bottom, with his last name spelled "Moor."

All of John's daughters except Judith had been married already.  (She wouldn't marry until the following year.) His son Gideon was only about 19 years old at the time and still at home.  And John's wife, Mary, was still alive, so we should see four people in his household.  Yet, the census record shows two males older than 16, one male younger than 16, and four females.  I think that Dorcas and Anna Spring were living in John's household by the time he left Hyde County.  That would explain why he left them something in his will.  (And just a side note, I just now re-discovered - by looking at my Ancestry Tree! - that John's daughter Mary named one of her daughters Dorcas!)  

Of course, in the way these things always seem to go for me, I wasn't able to find any actual record of a Dorcas or Anna Spring.  So, there really is no point in speculating further.  But I did discover, by cross-referencing the names on Elizabeth Spring's section of the 1786 census, that she was living in the Mattamuskeet area by then, which is where John Moore was living at the time. . . .

When we are all finished with our investigations, we'll just have to decide if there is enough circumstantial evidence, even if there are little holes poked in it here and there, to support the argument that our John Moore was the brother of Sarah Moore Cording, and thus the son of William.  I mean, in his Blacksheariana, Perry Linfield Blackshear identified Elisha Stout's wife as Susannah Ward, based merely on the fact that her father was named Enoch, their son was named Enoch, and that an Enoch Ward could be found in Georgia alongside their son Jacob.  That genealogical conclusion has been accepted as "fact" ever since, so apparently most people don't need very much "proof" when they are trying to fill in a family tree.

 And now, let's switch gears again.

I need you to look waaaaay back up there at the census record for John Moore Sr. again.  There, three names below him, we find Malachi Jolley.  The same Malachi Jolley who had married John's daughter almost exactly four years earlier and would later be named as executor in his will.  I think the fact that these two men were neighbors is further proof that John Moore Sr. is our guy.  

But guess what?  Take a look at this:

List of Men in the North Carolina 2nd Regiment

This is a list of soldiers from a DAR book.  Here we see private Malachi Jolley with a John Moore serving in his stead.  Now look at these:

List of Men in the North Carolina 8th Regiment

List of Men in the North Carolina 2nd Regiment

(I'm sorry these are so blurry.  I had to take screenshots and I guess I didn't blow the pages up enough first.)

So, these are the same people, even though they say they are in different companies and regiments.  One of the regiments was at Valley Forge and lost so many men that they were sent home for new recruits and then put under a new unit.  (And at some point one of the commanders was transferred into a different regiment - there were actually the 2nd, 4th, and 8th regiments involved.)  If you remember, I mentioned this information in my original post and threw it out, not because our John was a Quaker (this was before he joined), but because it says that he died.  But now, since I am really, really trying to solve this mystery, I felt like it should be revisited.  In order to understand what exactly was going on in this situation, I did some research.  I found an article on the National Archives website that said,

The level of African American involvement in the Revolution depended upon the region, state, and status of the potential black recruit. Out of the states that did allow black participation, most restricted African American enlistment to those who were legally identified as "free blacks."

Since the free blacks represented only a limited segment of the overall black population, a large portion of African Americans were automatically excluded because of their status as slaves. Those states most highly dependent on slave labor and plantation economies tended to be most resistant to black participation, whereas states less dependent on slave labor tended to be more open. This trend is reflected in the numbers of black servicemen that were documented in armed forces of various states during the revolution....

Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, however, did not adopt the extreme position held by South Carolina and Georgia. Outside of New England, Virginia recruited and enlisted more African American servicemen than any other state. Like most of the northern states, Virginia restricted its black recruits to those who were legally recognized as "free blacks or mulattoes." Like citizens of other plantation states, Virginians were averse to the notion of recruiting and arming the enslaved. Not only was there the possibility of revolt, but slaves were also regarded as costly property and an investment too valuable to risk losing through injury or death.

Despite these reservations, a significant minority of Virginia's black recruits consisted of enslaved blacks who were allowed to serve in the place of their owners. Any slaveholder who sought to evade the draft and military service could have one of his slaves serve in his stead, often with the agreement that the slave would be rewarded with freedom afterwards.

North Carolina's policies were similar to Virginia's, while Maryland was the only southern state to completely authorize unrestricted African American enlistments—regardless of whether the recruit was enslaved or free. In each of these states, the black recruits—whether free or officially enslaved—served alongside and in the same units as their white compatriots. Such was the case of Thomas Mason, who enlisted in North Carolina; fought in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and North Carolina during the war; and settled in Virginia.

And in another article,

My history of conscription begins with colonial militia. All of the colonies except Pennsylvania had similar militia laws. Substitution was allowed, and some colonies permitted one to pay a fee to avoid service (an option known as "commutation" in the Civil War). Conscription was designed to provoke volunteering (Levi 1997).....

States used militia drafts in the late 1770s to maintain the Continental Army, and substitution was permitted (Chambers 1987). During the Revolutionary War, annual recruiting began in 1777. One's term of service was no more than one year, ending in December each year (Royster 1979). The Continental Congress assigned each state a quota, which each state allocated among the towns. A militia commander then called for volunteers in a town. Few usually came forth. Thus, the state, town, or private citizens (sometimes all three) offered bounties to fill the quotas.... 

Before World War I, conscription was not designed to attract individuals directly. From colonial times through the Civil War, draftees could hire substitutes, and they often could pay a fee to avoid service. The first widespread use of conscription in the United States was in the Civil War.

So here is what could have happened:  John Moore and Malachi Jolley were very close friends.  In 1777, he might even have been courting John's daughter already.   When men from Hyde County were drafted, Malachi's name was pulled.  Neither he nor John wanted him to serve.  Perhaps one or both already had strong anti-war leanings, and may even have been worshipping with the Quakers (I read that this was allowed), even though they had not yet joined.  So what to do?  Well, maybe John or one of his family members had a slave that they wanted to free, one who was very patriotic and wanted to fight for the revolutionary cause.  (I say this because he enlisted for three years.)  Maybe allowing him to join the Continental Army would give him the ability to earn his freedom.  

Or how about this scenario:  Maybe our John Moore had a son, older than all of his daughters, who wanted to join up but was not drafted.  Maybe John did not want Malachi to go, because he was supposed to be marrying his daughter as soon as she was old enough, but since his son was intent on going (maybe even threatening to run away and do so if his father objected), they decided he would serve in Malachi's stead.  (This would not explain the extra male that John Sr. had in his household on either census, though, since those were both after the soldier John Moore had died!)

I did a broad search through the records for any other Malachi Jolleys in North Carolina and didn't find any.  So I am pretty sure this is our Malachi.  Oh!  I almost forgot!  There were three other men in the same company with surnames that were from the Hyde/Beaufort area:  Jennet, Slade, and Blount.  The Slades have a large Creek named after them in Hyde County and the Jennets all seemed to live in the Matttamuskeet area - they were possibly related to the native Mattamuskeet tribe.  

And besides, even if there was another Malachi in some other county who I just didn't find because he was still a teenager during the war and then died before he could show up in any records, that requires us to concoct just as many "maybes," and seems like an awful big coincidence that there would be two entirely different Malachi Jolleys and John Moores with a close tie in some other place at exactly the same time.  So I feel quite confident that this was our Malachi Jolley, and that the John Moore who served in his place was somehow related to our Moores.  (But not the son of Henry, because his son John was still alive after the war!)

The only problem with all of this is that there are Revolutionary War pay vouchers for Malachi.  I did a bit of research and it appears that there are documented cases where pay was given in the draftee's name, not in the name of their substitute.  I found a family tree online suggesting that Malachi himself did serve in the war, was kicked out of the Quakers for it, and then was readmitted to the Quakers afterward.  I'm not sure if he actually served or not, but I think it is these pay vouchers floating around in the records that have caused the confusion:

So, this is dated 1792, but it implies that it was pay for prior to 1783.  (You know, because all of the soldiers had to get back pay because the Continental Congress didn't have a way to levy taxes so there was no money to pay the Continental Army.)  The date is printed on the voucher, so I'm assuming that this could be pay for any time before that date, not necessarily that the person in question served until that date.  

It is possible that, since his substitute enlisted for a three year term and then died, Malachi was held to the terms of service and had to finish them out, but as far as the getting kicked out of the Quakers thing goes, I don't see that there is any evidence at all in the Quaker records to support that.  (Quite the contrary.)  

(I do wonder how a Quaker man might feel about taking money from the government for participation in a war, even if he wasn't a Quaker yet during the time of service, and I suspected that he might consider it to be in conflict with Quaker beliefs, but perhaps it would be justifiable if he were just collecting the money for his substitute and turning it over to that man's family.)

The same Ancestry family tree implied that Malachi's enlistment was going against the Quaker doctrine and thus it was the reason that his father did not include him in his will.  There is ZERO evidence, however, that his father, Phillip Jolley, was ever a Quaker, and besides, Phillip died in 1774, well before the Revolutionary War even began, so this just goes to show that you have to be really careful when you copy stuff from Ancestry. 

And since we are on the topic of Jolleys . . . . It wasn't only our John who had a connection.  If we pull some threads, we find that William Moore had a connection to the family as well.

Beginning in 1726 and running through the next ten years, Thomas Jolley, the father of Phillip and thus grandfather of Malachi, began witnessing one deed after another.  They were all located on the east and west side of the Matchapungo River, on Matchapungo Creek, or on the North Dividing Creek.  In 1733 he purchased 455 acres of land at the head of Jordan's Creek by the Devil's Woodyard (Can you imagine living next to a place with that name?!) on the west side of the Matchapungo River.  (The head of Jordan's Creek is very close to the head of the North Dividing Creek.)  This land would later be transferred to Phillip, by his mother, after his father's death (1749).  Phillip promptly sold the land for 70 pounds sterling (which was a tidy sum, especially considering that actual silver was very hard to come by in the colonies at the time.) In the same year, Phillip Jolley purchased 110 acres of land on North Dividing Creek, but sold that tract in 1756.  Where he lived after that, I do not know, but he did have a town lot at Woodstock (in the same general area) during the 1760's.  As mentioned before, William Moore owned lands on the west side of Matchepungo River, at the head of North Dividing Creek, and the tar kiln he "burnt" was on the east side of the creek.  So, William Moore was living and working in close proximity to the land owned by the Jolley family.  Throughout the 1750's, 1760's, and 1770's, both John and William Moore would also serve as jurors alongside Phillip Jolley.  

Oh, and look what I just found:

Land Grant Survey for Phillip Jolley
Hyde County, North Carolina, 1768

In 1768, Phillip Jolley received a land grant for 100 acres bordering Samuel Sinclare's line.  This is probably the same Sinclare family that Sinclair's Creek was named after, which would put his new land in the same area as the Cording/Spring transactions. And look who one of the chain bearers was - none other than William Moore.

 

I didn't come across a deed showing that this land was ever sold or transferred, but at some point before the 1786 census was taken, Malachi Jolley ended up in Mattamuskeet.  I found no record of Malachi ever receiving any land anywhere, though, until well after the family had moved to Jones County, so maybe he was working and living on and/or leasing a portion of our John's Mattamuskeet land when he was old enough to be out on his own.

As for why Phillip Jolley left his entire estate to a few of his friends instead of his children, I couldn't really say.  He seems to have been a well-respected man in the community, serving as the executor of estates, the guardian for orphans, and overseer of the roads, so it seems strange that the reason would be that he was a mean old man.  Maybe, by the time he was dying, he was suffering from dementia or paranoia or insanity of some kind.  Maybe the men he left his estate to were not really the friends he thought they were, but wrote the will and misled him of its contents.  (He signed with his mark, which means he did not write down what was actually on the document himself.)  The inventory of his estate has survived, and he appears to have been quite wealthy. 

Here is a page showing that John Moore purchased items at his estate sale:  

Record of Sales of Estate of Phillip Jolley
Hyde County, North Carolina - 1774

This page shows that John purchased a jacket (5 shillings, 4 pence), a pair of breeches (8 shillings, 1 pence), and an auger (1 shilling, 4 pence).  Other pages show that he also purchased a chest (12 shillings), a wheel (1 pound, 6 shillings, 8 pence), and two hoes and one candlestick (3 shillings, 6 pence).  Grand total: 2 pounds, 15 shillings, and 11 pence.  When you consider that a fine for not attending court was something like four shillings and a year's taxes for an average, non-slave-holding family was less than a pound, that was a good sum of money to be spending.  

(And just some related facts that I find interesting - Did you know that colonial America had the highest standard of living in the world in 1774?  However, those colonists were probably pretty happy when estate sales rolled around, since Britain put severe restrictions on what was allowed to be manufactured in and sold across the colonies, and taxes on goods became increasingly higher as the Revolutionary War approached.)   

So . . . last night after I went to bed, my mind kept turning on the problem of Malachi Jolley and John Moore, and the friendship they had, and the Revolutionary War substitute thing, and the issues between Malachi and his father Phillip, and I remembered a document I had come across weeks ago, and a new theory literally just popped into my head.  It was like all of the pieces suddenly clicked together to make a portion of our puzzle that looked like it might be right.  I actually had to get out of bed and write it down, because I was afraid I would forget it by morning. 

Now, bear with me; I know we are talking about an entirely different family here, but I assure you it is relevant to John Moore.  Perhaps the reason that Malachi was not mentioned in the will of Phillip Jolley was because . . . he was not actually Phillip's son.

Yes, Malachi and Phillip were the only male persons with the Jolly surname to turn up in the Hyde County records after Thomas Jolley's death in 1749.  So who else would he have belonged to?  Well, how about a female Jolley?  While looking through the file of bastardy bonds, I found this:

Order for the Constable to Summon Katherine Jolley
to Appear before a Justice of the Peace
31 August 1749

Here we see a woman who was almost definitely the sister of Phillip Jolley.  She was a woman of questionable character, who already had one bastard child in 1749.  Chances are, nobody in their right mind would have married this woman with such a scandalous reputation, and it is likely that she would have had additional children out of wedlock after this point.  (I've seen this with other women in the records numerous times.)  What if Malachi Jolley was the illegitimate child of Katherine Jolley, meaning that he was the nephew of Phillip Jolley and not his son?  

In 1758, there was an entry in the minutes of the orphan court that mentioned an orphan girl named Winifred Jolley:

Hyde County Orphan Court
September Term 1758

This record book, just like the regular court minute book, apparently contained a whole lot of loose pages by the time it was microfilmed, because tons of pages are out of order and missing.  What if there was an entry for Malachi and it has just been lost?  The weird thing about the way this stuff worked back in the day was that, unless a church warden was bringing a child (or an entire family of children) to the attention of the courts, you don't see their orphanhood (is that a word?) addressed until a particular person wanted to take on an indenture for them (or, if their father had been rich, somebody wanted to be the child's guardian and take charge of their inheritance).  So you might see siblings in multiple different entries, sometimes even in different terms of court.  And remember, an orphan by definition back then was usually a minor who no longer had a father to support them, although in the case of bastard children I have seen inconsistencies.  I have noticed, though, that in Hyde County, single women were allowed to keep their children, and were supported by either the father of the child (that is what bastardy bonds were for), her own family, or by the church.  (In Craven County, where our Blackshears lived, the court almost always took the children away from their mothers and bound them out with an indenture.) 

Anyway, maybe Malachi did not know who his father was, and maybe Phillip was relatively kind to him so that Malachi, in the supposed Quaker custom (which I read in someone's comments on Ancestry but have not verified) of naming your second son after the father's father, named his own child after his uncle Phillip.  And maybe Phillip Jolley had no real affection for Malachi and felt no responsibility to leave an inheritance to the son of some other man and a disreputable sister.  Maybe this is why we never see Malachi owning any land in Hyde County.  

So getting back to how this is relevant . . . maybe, if Malachi was fatherless, it could explain why he was so close to John Moore.  Maybe John sort of took him under his wing.  Maybe he was even an apprentice to John.  (We will talk about John's trade later.  Does anybody out there know what Malachi Jolley did for a living?)  Of course, all of this is speculation, but I think that the circumstantial evidence is strong enough to not reject it outright.  As historian Kevin Duffus explains, 

Rarely in history can be found an unbroken chain of evidence providing a clear solution to a mystery, especially in studies of people who play minor roles hundreds of years ago.

He offers these three guidelines for comparing possible answers to such mysteries:

• Which hypothesis presents more comprehensive facts possessing the greater explanatory scope and strength?
• Which hypothesis is the most plausible?
• Which hypothesis was contrived for a particular purpose?

Well, I don't think the hypothesis that Phillip was a Quaker who disowned his son for serving in the war was contrived to fill some purpose; I think the person just took a cursory glance at the records that popped up on Ancestry and drew a conclusion without careful consideration of the "evidence."  Had they looked more closely, they would have realized that such a theory is certainly not plausible.  My hypothesis, on the other hand, is not only plausible, but also has numerous pieces of evidence that, although mostly circumstantial, do lend strength to the argument and provide a greater explanatory scope (since it explains much more than just the fact that Malachi was not in Phillip's will).

Besides, nobody ever thinks that their ancestor was "a person of a Lewd life and Conversation & a Common Disturber of the peace" who in "Scandalous words" called upstanding men of the community "Rogues" and their daughters "Common Strumpits" until they find an obscure document in a folder somewhere, so sometimes wild ideas end up actually being the truth!

Now, while we are on the topic of bastardy bonds, let's pick up the puzzle pieces related to Roger Moore.  He's the guy I found way back when in my initial research who was selling land to a "pitate" from Ocracoke Island in 1754.  (Ocracoke lies on the Outer Banks southward across the Sound from Lake Mattamuskeet.  On the larger map up above, it is spelled "Occacok.")

I must make a confession here - when I first found this deed, I only took a cursory glance.  For some reason, all that stuck in my head was Roger Moore, John Arthur, Ocracoke, and (pirate?).  When I began my current quest, I was thinking that Roger Moore sold land on Ocracoke, not to someone from Ocracoke.  Silly me, I should have gone back and read the deed more closely, because I wasted several days researching all kinds of places trying to find a deed showing him purchasing the land, as that would tell us where he lived and what his occupation was at the time.  I know, I know.  Now I feel like I need a good fapa on the back of my head.  (For those of you who don't know, that is what Greek children get when they do something dumb and ought to have known better.)  

Anyway, after getting nowhere (but finding out a lot of fascinating stuff about Ocracoke Island and the pirate Blackbeard's time in Bath town!), I finally decided to reread the deed.  It turns out that the "pitate" in question was actually supposed to be "pilate," which is a wonderfully colonial misspelling of the word "pilot."  The pilots were boatmen who would guide larger ships through the treacherous Outer Banks and into Pamlico Sound.  (There is a strong pirate connection to the island, though, and one notable resident of the time may even have been Blackbeard's quartermaster!)

So, the deed was for a messuage (farmstead or house with outbuildings) and 200 acres of land by a fork of Oyster Shell Creek, bordering the land of Simon Fortescue and a tract formerly belonging to (D?) McCarty.  The deed doesn't say if this was on the east or west side of Matchapungo River or by Matchapungo Creek, or even somewhere entirely different, like the Mattamuskeet area, and I couldn't find Oyster Shell Creek on any of the old maps and Google was no help at all, so I had to do some sleuthing.  I found an abstract of a 1720 deed in which John Rigney of Beaufort precinct was selling 430 acres of land in Hyde precinct to John Giddings.  The acreage began at a "fork in Oyster Shell Creek in Matchapungo River."  Okay.  That narrows it down a bit, but I don't think the creek was "in" the river!  (Oooh, maybe John Giddings is the one who sold the land to Roger Moore!  Hmmm, something to look for.)  

Okay, so, you know me, I looked.  And what I found was a broken chain of evidence (go figure!) showing the exchange of this piece of land.  

1 - (1720) John Rigney sold 430 acres to John Giddings - beginning at a fork of Oyster Shell Creek in Matchapungo River.  (The area was probably unpopulated at the time - no neighboring landowners named.)

2 - (1738) John Giddings sold an undisclosed amount of land to Darby McCarty.  (This information came from the text of the following deed.  There were no Giddings family deeds recorded between 1735 and 1765.)

3 - (1741) Darby McCarty sold to Bailey McCarty 200 acres that he purchased from John Giddings in 1738 - joining his own land, then due east by a course of marked trees to a Spanish oak, to a fork in Oystershell creek, then along the creek to the land of Simon Foscue Jr.  

4 - (1754) Roger Moore sold 200 acres of land to John Arthur - bordering the land that was formerly McCarthy's, then due east by a course of marked trees to a Spanish oak, and also from a fork in Oystershell creek, running along the creek to the land of Simon Fortescue Jr.  (Apparently Fortescue was actually pronounced Foscue - maybe with a slight r sound in the middle - since I have seen the two spellings used interchangeably in the court records, probably based on whoever was clerk at the time.)

5 - (1762) John Arthur sold to William Davis 430 acres that he bought from Roger Moore - on the east side of Matchapungo River in Currituck, beginning at the mouth of Oystershell Creek, then along two other men's properties, and then along the line of Darby McCarthy at the head of Oystershell Creek. 

So, I haven't been able to find the creek on any maps, but I think that it fed into the Matchapungo River, and that is why they said "in."  Here is a newer map with all of the places we talked about before, as well as these new ones:

Map of Hyde County
Pungo River Detail

Once again, clicking on the map title will give you a zoomable version.  (I had to colorize this myself because this map was kind of confusing for anyone who hasn't become familiar with the area, so, you know, not the best job, but hey . . . . This one shows the waterways quite differently than the earlier map, and even though those things would have changed somewhat over the past 200 years, this one seems much more accurate.)  Today, the Hyde County boundary is in the middle of the Pungo (a.k.a. Matchapungo) River, but in the 1700's it was way over on the left, much closer to Bath Creek and the town of Bath.  

On the west side of the River on this map you can see the approximate locations of the land of William Moore, his daughter Sarah, Phillip Jolley, and possibly John Moore's nephew and niece.  Over on the east side of the river, we see two major creeks, named after landowners whose land was near Roger Moore's property:  Slade and Fortescue.  (It appears from deed records that a large portion of the area was in the hands of the Slade family by the late 1730's.)  At the head of Slade Creek, I put a star.  This is because modern maps show the "Currituck Oyster Company" at this location.  (This entire area was known as the district of New Currituck in the 1700's.)   Could this entire area be good for collecting oysters?  Maybe one of those fingers coming off of the main river between these two creeks was the Oystershell Creek in question.  There is an Oyster Creek several miles further east, closer to Lake Mattamuskeet, but that is nowhere near the Matchapungo River. 

So, sometime between 1735 and 1754, Roger Moore purchased 430 acres of land.  We don't have a single deed showing this, so we don't know whether he purchased it in one or more transactions, but it was most likely the same tract that John Giddings bought from the original grant holder, because 430 acres is a pretty specific number.  And not only is the deed showing him purchasing the land lost, but when John Arthur sold the land, his deed says that he purchased the entire 430 acres from Roger Moore, which means there should have been another deed showing Roger Moore selling the additional 230 acres to John Arthur.  (Those darned lost records are what is making solving this mystery so hard!)

Why am even going on about all this?  Well, for one thing, I am having a one-sided conversation with you all in order to process all of the information I have gathered.  For another, I think it will be relevant to the records I've found for Roger and his possible link to John Moore.  

It is a shame that there is a twenty year gap in which Roger Moore might have purchased his land.  If we knew whether it was earlier or later within that gap, it would certainly give us a hint as to Roger's age.  Was he of the same generation as William Moore, or was he one generation younger?  Could the two men have been brothers, or maybe father and son?  Could Roger Moore have been an older brother of John?  Maybe he was actually John's father.  Or was he completely unrelated and it was just a coincidence that they had the same last name?  

We have a few other documents for Roger Moore, so let's take a look at those and see if they are helpful.  He first shows up in the records in 1752, in a flurry of activity that suggests not so much that he was barely old enough to enter public life, but just more likely that a lot of records from that particular year have survived (and are readable!).

I say this because the types of things we see are not what we would expect from a young man:

In March of 1752, the inventory of the estate of Bailey McCarty, deceased, was proven by Roger's oath.  The actual inventory was conducted by Jeremiah Slade (remember that name), so I'm not sure why Roger was the one proving it in court.  Maybe he was there?  Maybe he helped?  

Now, it just so happens that the winter of 1751-52 was a particularly bad one for Hyde County.  Whereas a normal term of court for those times would have two to four pages of minutes and address the deaths of only one or two people (and oftentimes none), December of 1751 saw 6 new deaths of landed people, which are the only ones who show up in the minutes because their estates have to be dealt with.  So, if the person who died left a will, the will would be proved in court, and if they did not, a person would come to court and request letters of administration so they could deal with the estate.  Sometimes people would come in and orphans would be mentioned even though there was never a mention of their father's death, but I think that only happened (as I mentioned before) if someone wanted to take on their indenture or guardianship.  

Then, in March of 1752, there were eight pages of minutes with eighteen new deaths in the court records.  Only about half of the people left wills, which meant that most of the deaths were probably unexpected, and/or that the person who died was not old enough to have thought that a will was needed yet.  Another interesting thing that I noticed was that quite a few of the people who requested letters of administration did so through an attorney, implying that they were unwilling or unable to attend court themselves.

An Inventory of the Estate of
John Sanderson
taken by Roger Moore
August 1752

What was going on?  There was obviously some reason people were dying at an abnormally high rate.  Was it the weather?  Some sort of epidemic?  Both maybe?  I did some searching online and discovered that January of 1752 was abnormally cold from Maine all the way down to South Carolina, so that could have been a factor.  On the other hand, there were eight families that lost two or more property-owning adults within a few months of each other, and there is no telling how many wives and children also died, so there could have been some kind of sickness involved as well.  I think the fact that many people were afraid to go into court (the clerk of the court and at least one - possibly two - of the current  justices were among those who died), indicates that it wasn't just the weather. 

During the June 1752 court session, when the deaths were finally starting to subside but there were a considerable number of estates that still needed to be dealt with, Roger Moore requested letters of administration for one of his neighbors, John Sanders (or Sanderson, depending on who was writing things down).

He took the man's estate into his possession, took an inventory, and conducted an estate sale.  I never saw an entry where he was given custody of the children, but later entries would indicate that they were in his care.  Maybe things were such a mess that nobody thought to ask about it at the time. 

Or it could just be that some of the minutes looked like this:

Hyde County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions
March Term 1753

(There were several pages like this that I had just given up on, but then decided to try a fourth time to read.  I actually had to adjust the color and contrast and put on a filter that removed some of the bleed-through - three times - before I noticed his name down there near the bottom.)

Anyway, I thought the fact that Roger Moore was involved with settling the estate of two different neighbors, as well as taking on orphaned children, indicated that he was old enough to be considered responsible, but that was before I realized how many people had died during that same time period.  Maybe there were just too many sick people and so the court was giving letters of administration to anybody who was healthy and willing to do the job.

This next document makes me think that might be the case:

Roger Moore
Hyde County Bastardy Bond
June 1752

Here we see that at the very same time that he was given some major responsibility by the courts, Roger Moore was in trouble with the church wardens for getting a young single woman pregnant - a young woman named Sarah Slade, meaning that she was the daughter of one of Roger's landed neighbors.  And did you notice the date on this?  June of 1752, three months after Roger and Jeremiah Slade took an inventory of their joint neighbor's estate.  Hmmmm.  To make matters worse, Sarah Slade was also obviously related to (daughter? niece?) one of the church wardens that Roger had to pay a bond to - a bond in the amount of two hundred pounds sterling, which was a whole lot of money.

I'm thinking that a young man might not have that kind of money, and even though he had two bondsmen, one of whom was really wealthy, I'm wondering if Roger Moore didn't just decide to marry the young woman after all, and in a little bit you will see where I got such an idea.

So, in August 1752, Roger Moore completed the inventory of the estate of John Sanders.  In September, another man petitioned the courts to have the estate of one of the orphans taken from Roger Moore, which was granted.  

In March 1753, the justices declared that anyone who was not an administrator but had in their possession property that was not their own, were to be called into court.  Yikes.  It really does sound like things were quite a mess.  In the same term, Roger got permission to sell John Sanders' estate, and in June he was called into court to give an account of the sale and to swear an oath regarding the money of the orphans that was "in his hands."  (He was also the defendant in a seemingly unrelated court case during this term as well.) In September, the courts actually appointed a legal guardian for three of the orphaned children and ordered Roger to give up possession of their estates.  

Then, in 1754, Roger sold his land to John Arthur, but apparently not all of it (unless he had even more that didn't get recorded in the deed records), because he had to be living somewhere, right?  Maybe he needed the money for that bastardy bond he was required to pay.  Also in 1754, Roger was one of forty-two men "sommoned to gieve in ther tithe."   The tax list is just a list of names and doesn't say anything about how much he owed or how many tithes he was responsible for, so maybe this was just saying that he needed to report that information.

In September of the same year, we find this:

Hyde County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions
September Term 1754

Roger went into court to record a mark for his son, Major Moore.  Why at that time?  I've noticed that sometimes a lone man or woman came into court and recorded their mark, and sometimes four or so family members recorded their marks at the same time.  I haven't really looked into this closely, but I'm guessing that the whole family thing is either after a father died and left his stock to his children, or maybe when a new family moved into the county.  There were also times, like this, where a father recorded a mark for their child.  

Was this an older child that Roger had from a marriage, or was it the child he begot on Sarah Slade?  I looked on Ancestry for a Major Moore in North Carolina during the 1700's and came up with only one hit:  A man with the same name got married in Granville County in 1780, was listed on the 1786 census in the same place with no family, and was still there in 1810, listed in the age category that was right for a person born in 1752/3.  Now, hold on to the name of this son, because we are going to come back to it in just a minute.  

We don't see Roger Moore in the court records during 1755, except for maybe a court case - McCarty vs. Moore - in which the attorney of the defendant (Roger?) was requesting an appeal.  And then, in 1756, we see this:

Hyde County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions
March Term 1756

This page was actually one of the earlier images on the microfilm.  It appears that all of the loose pages were filmed first, because they run up through 1763 before going back down to 1744.  Most of the loose pages are undated, and some are practically unreadable.  I figured out the date for this page by cross-referencing the deeds proved on that day in court with the deed book indexes, and then discovered that it was very, very faintly written at the top of the facing page.  The very first entry on this page says, 

"[torn] Daniel [torn] [ight] the lightwood that [now is on] the Land [torn] Roger Moore Dec'd of the said Dec'd [torn] It is ordered that the said Daniel Wells take [torn] Light and apploye it to his own use, allowing [torn] the Orphans the [?] of the Country for lightwood."  

So, here we are a year and a half later and Roger Moore had died.  There are too many missing words for me to know exactly what was going on, but if you remember from my last post, the lightwood was what they would burn to make tar, so there was apparently some dispute between Daniel Wells and Roger Moore's estate as to who the lightwood on a piece of property belonged to.

Was this a matter relating to the estate of John Sanders, or to the estate of Roger Moore?  I did not find a single mention of Roger's death or the administration of his estate in the court minutes.  I assumed that this was due to missing pages, but then I realized that at the beginning of the microfilm it said, "many pasted down pages."  Pasted down pages.  I saw this before, and I was like yeah okay, no big deal, the pages must have been brittle, but it didn't dawn on me until today that if the page is pasted down, you are losing whatever is written on the back.  That would explain why I haven't been able to find reference to things that should have been there.  And once again, who knows what kind of important information we are missing.  (Probably the kind that would answer all of our questions!)

We also don't know if the orphans mentioned in this entry are the orphans of John Sanders, or of Roger Moore.  (We don't even know how many children Roger Moore had, because there is no mention of his estate in the court records.) 

From this point on, things get a bit confusing.  (As if we they weren't already, right?)  Here is a run-down of what I found in the records:  

1756, March - Orphan Court 

"It appears to this Court that Daniel Wells Bought the Wood that is now on the Land of Roger More Deceased the said Roger Moore in his Lifetime, and that [torn] Daniel Wells may take the said Lightwood and app[torn] to his own use, allowing the said Orphans the use of the Country for the said Light Wood."

Ah.  Well that explains that.  Although, the fact that this refers to the "said" orphans means that there was prior mention made of them in the minutes, and I couldn't find a page that said anything about them.  This also confirms that Roger Moore still owned land when he died, just like I thought, which means there is another missing deed.

1756, June - Orphan Court

"Sarah Moore Widow Moved the Court to have propper Person Appointed to Divide the Estate of John Sanderson Deceased amongst the said Deceased Children & thereupon the Court appoints Mr. Thomas Smith [and] Mr. John [Cary] Sen. to Divide the Same, and that they Render an account of the Division by them so made to the next [torn] Court."

Hmmm.  Sarah Moore widow.  I assume that she was the widow of Roger Moore, since her last name is Moore, and it is the orphans that he had in his custody that this is talking about.  It's kind of weird that she was asking for the estate to be divided, since three years earlier the courts ordered Roger to give up the portion belonging to three of the children.  

(June 1756?) - Orphan Court

"[torn] the Two Cows [?] to be given in Lieu of the two that the said Roger Moore [Killed] be Delivered to Sarah Moore the widow for the [use] of Surriah Sanders child of John Sanderson Dec'd."

Okay.  So I think this confirms that Sarah was the widow of Roger.  What the stuff with the cows was all about, though . . . . 

1756, December  - Probate Records

"Daniel Wells vs Sarah Moore Executrix"

Was this still about the Lightwood dispute?  Since this was filed in the probate records under Roger Moore, I'm guessing the dispute was related to his estate and not the estate of John Sanders.  As you will see, the entire probate file was documents related to this court case, so maybe the dispute was already in progress before Roger died.

1757, April - Probate Records

"To the Sheriff of the said County Greeting Etc.  We Command You that the goods and Chattels of Sarah Moore - Executrix of Roger Moore of the said County Cordwainer Deceased is too be found in your Bailiwick you Cause to be made Nine pounds Eleven Shillings & Eleven pence proclamation Money which in Our Court held at Woodstock on the first Tuesday in December Last was awarded to Daniel Wells for his Damage, an also fifteen Shillings like Money Attorneys fee together with Costs and your fee for the Service of this precept and see that you have this - and your proceedings thereupon before the Justices of our Court to be held for said County at Woodstock on the first Tuesday in June next."    On the back: "Nothing to be found. by John Webster Sheriff"

Well, this confirms that Sarah was the Executrix of Roger Moore.  No will has survived for him, but since it says she was the executrix and not administrator, I think that means she was named as such in his will.  As Executrix, Sarah should have sold as much of Roger's estate as was necessary to satisfy his debts, and then divided the remainder between herself (her dower right as a wife) and any children (as their inheritance).  We never see any reference to this in the court records, but when the sheriff came around to collect what was due to Daniel Wells, apparently Sarah claimed that there was nothing left of Roger's estate.  The same letter was issued to the sheriff a second time, and that time it says on the back that two pounds, fourteen shillings was collected.

1757, June - Probate Records

"The inventory of the goods of Roger Moore Dec'd.  [Ateacht] and Sold June Court 1757"  (Ten items listed along with the names of purchasers, and the total amount collected was 2"14"0.)

August 24th 1757 - Probate Records

"A True and perfect Invatary of all on Singler The goods and Chattels of Roger Moore Dec'd

1 iron froe 1 plow 1 gouge 1 pare pinchers - small parcel of Shoemakers Jutes [?] dito 1 corring knife 1 pair Iron Wedges 1 hand saw 1 Negro Wench Named ginneu 1 old Case 1 old Chist 4 old Earthin plates . . . All that was returned or could be found - by John Webster Sheriff."

It sounds like Sarah Moore was trying to get away with not paying Daniel Wells, because it looks suspiciously like she was trying to hide things, doesn't it?

Now, at this point I had tentatively concluded that Roger Moore had probably married Sarah Slade, the girl he got pregnant.  Do you remember how I said "Major" was not a very common name?  Well, while looking through the deed indexes I noticed that there was a "Major Slade" in neighboring Beaufort County.  (Just so you know, more than half the names you find in the earlier Beaufort land transactions were made by people who actually lived in Hyde County.)  And I thought, Aha!  Here is some circumstantial evidence that he did marry Sarah Slade, because his child was named an uncommon name that just so happened to be in the Slade family.  (Makes sense, right?)

And then I noticed that the indexes showed Major Slade buying and selling land beginning in 1774, which is right about the time Roger Moore's illegitimate child would have turned 21.  So I thought to myself, did Roger not marry Sarah Slade, but recognized the child as his own, which is why the boy had Roger's last name in the court minutes?  And, maybe, after Roger died, the toddler went to live with his Slade relatives and people just started calling him Slade again (you know, because Roger was a rogue and the family had money so they could do whatever they wanted and there were no birth certificates so nothing was really legal anyway), but then later, after Major left town at some point, he decided to go by Moore?  (Kind of makes sense?)

But then I saw that Major Slade was still buying and selling land after 1880, when Major Moore was already in Granville County, and I actually read a couple of the deeds in Beaufort County that showed that Major Slade was already a planter in 1774, so I had to throw all of that out the window.  (This is why we look at everything!)

And guess what I found on those newly discovered 1790 federal census pages?  There was a Major Slade in Beaufort with a large family and numerous slaves in that year, but there was also a Major Slade in Hyde, living as a single man with no family.  So there were two Major Slades, one older and one younger.  

So.  How is it that there was a Sarah Slade bearing the child of Roger Moore, and a Major Slade, and a Major Moore, both of whom were born at approximately the same time?  It just seems a bit weird that none of it would be connected.  

Over the next few years, Sarah Moore was in the court records with some cases involving money, and then, in 1765, this entry appears:  

Hyde County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions
March Term 1765 

Wait.  What?  Sarah Moore was the mother of Sothy Sanders?  That would mean that Roger Moore had married the widow of John Sanders.  I cracked open the deed books again to see if there was a record of John Sanders' wife, and sure enough, there was a 1742 deed from one Benjamin Sanderson giving a gift of 1000 acres in the same area to his son John and his wife Sarah.  (And now we see what the confusion with the names was all about.  Apparently John decided to shorten it, but I guess people were having trouble getting used to that.)  Well, that explains why the orphaned children of John Sanders were in Roger's custody.

So, I don't have any idea what happened with Roger Moore and the Sarahs.  Maybe he married Sarah Slade and they named the child after her relative, and then she died and he married Sarah the widow Sanders, and then he died and the child (Major Moore) ended up with who knows who and eventually moved to Granville County?  Maybe he didn't marry Sarah Slade at all, the younger Major Slade in the records was the illegitimate child that Roger had recognized before his death and whose name reverted from Moore to Slade, and the Major Moore found in Granville later was just some other person.  

Or maybe, Roger had been previously married and the wife died either before or after his shenanigans with Sarah Slade, and the Major Moore named as his son in the court minutes was a child of his first marriage.

I don't think we are going to figure this out (unless any of you are seeing something that I am missing).  We do know that the widow Sanders was at least thirty years old, maybe even older, when Roger married her, so that might indicate that Roger was not a very young man at the time either.  But was he old enough that he could have been the father of our John Moore?  I think it is still a possibility.  On the other hand, Roger could have been considerably younger than the widow Sanders.  Maybe he was a rogue who just wanted to get his hands on her land.  So, he could have been an older brother of our John.

Or maybe this was actually two different Roger Moores.  The bastardy bond (1752) said that Roger was a sadler.  The deed records and probate records (1754 and later) say he was a cordwainer, which means someone who made new shoes/boots out of leather.  (This would be in contrast to a cobbler, who repaired shoes and was actually prohibited by law from making new ones.)  Well, since both are made of leather, I guess it is possible that he switched from making saddles to shoes, but I don't know how likely that would be.  So maybe the cordwainer was an older man, maybe even a brother of William Moore, and Roger Moore the sadler was a younger man, possibly a son of William Moore or Roger the elder.  Ah, but then the court records and bastardy bond should have been referring to them as such, and they didn't, and there is never another mention of a Roger Moore after the 1756(ish) death, so maybe they were one and the same after all.  

You know, I hate it when I spend three days working through a problem, only to end up right back where I started.

The idea did occur to me that maybe all of these Moores were not actually from the same family, but the more I think about it, the more unlikely I find that idea.  I've looked at enough 18th century records from Hyde County, Beaufort County to the west, Craven/Jones Counties to the south, and Onslow County south of that to see that generally, people with the same last name in all four counties were related somehow.  I know, I know, I said the Craven County Moores were not related, but that's because they were originally Mohrs, and I think this has been sufficiently documented.  Of course, my research led me to a certain discovery a couple of weeks ago that might make us all wonder if I have my head screwed on straight while making such an assertion, because some of the Beaufort Moores were actually a family of free blacks, some of whom moved to Craven County in around the 1770's, so we are going to have to figure out exactly which Moores were them at some point.  

Maybe next week, because this post has gotten waaaay too long already.  (Ha!  And I thought I was going to get this mystery all sorted out in one or two weeks!)  So, since we ended with the conflicting trades of Roger Moore, I think we will pick up the puzzle piece of John Moore's trade when we continue this search for answers.  See you next time,

                                                                                                                                                 - Therese