John Moore Revisited - Part 3

Last week we began to look closely at the historical documents from Hyde County in hopes of shedding light on John Moore's life and who his father might have been.  We determined that our John Moore was probably the John More Sr. from the 1786 state census, tried to nail down the identity of the nieces he named in his will, and took a cursory look at three other contemporaneous local Moores.  We spent some time examining a potential father, Roger Moore, which was kind of like tuning in to a soap opera that has already been on the air for years, and then only catching one episode a week.  Not at all helpful for determining what exactly was going on all those two hundred sixty-some-odd years ago, but a great illustration nevertheless of the pitfalls of genealogical research.  

I know I told you that today we would begin by looking at John Moore's trade, but first I want to show you that document that I keep telling you is coming and then never have time to put up.  I found it on the North Carolina Digital Collections website, and I'm pretty sure I already had it when I talked about John Moore before:

Revolutionary War Troop Return:
Hyde County, North Carolina
Mattamuskeet District, List of Invalids & Guns
7 February 1782

I love looking at these old documents; they are so interesting!  Learning all the little historical details helps me construct a picture of what our ancestors' lives were like - which doesn't really matter if all you want to do is fill out a family tree, but is really important if you are trying to tell a person's story.

Do you remember how we learned last time that, during the Revolutionary War, as the Continental Army's numbers became depleted, their ranks were replenished by men from the colonial militias?  This is a report from a colonel of the Hyde County militia, showing two things:  the number of "invalids," meaning men who were excused from serving, and an inventory of available weapons.

I think I mentioned way back when during one of my Blackshear posts that North Carolina law required all members of the militia to have a gun in working order - the colony did not provide them weapons (or tents or other gear that might be needed if they were going off to war).  

So, before we look at the names on this list, let's look at the part about the guns.  At first I thought this was reporting how many guns there were from the 65 men who did not have to serve, but then I noticed that in the section with the officers it says they had 90 privates.  They only had 53 working guns, though, and less than half of those were muskets.  The remaining 37 guns were "unfixed."  There is a note at the bottom (well, the side actually) explaining the reason why they had so few weapons available:  

"The reason of the Number of Guns of this place being so small, have sent 38 of our best into the Service which never were return'd."

I don't know if the number of guns belonged only to the 90 privates, or if all 145 men, even the 55 who were excused from service, had to give up their guns if needed.  It could be that the number of guns was what the county had in their stockpile; way back in 1754 there was an entry in the court minutes indicating that the county had been storing bullets, powder, and flints, and was selling the bullets just two months before the start of the French & Indian War (D'oh!).  

But here is something interesting that I noticed while reading through the old estate sale records - many of the men owned muskets and small guns, which made sense because those estates were from the rich guys, and guns were pretty expensive.  And I don't know about you all, but somehow my pre-college schooling gave me the impression that 18th century American colonists had muskets and pirates had small guns, yet the number of each on this list (even if the 38 they sent into service were muskets) are not that far out of balance.  Of course, now that I think about it, those gentlemen and Esquires of the day must have had pistols, since that is what was used for duels (you know, like the whole Hamilton and Burr drama, which took place in 1804 but had been brewing for years).  

Okay, now to the part we are supposed to be looking at in order to solve our research question!  John Moore.  There are two lists of "invalids": those over 50 years old, and those under 50 years old.  (Hmmm. I wonder which list the people who were exactly 50 years old would be on!)  John Moor is shown on the list of men over 50 years old, and we know that this is our John Moore because he is shown as being a Quaker. 

Well, now we need to stop and discuss colonial militias for a moment.  Before the Revolutionary War, men between the ages of 16 and 60 were required to muster and serve.  It never occurred to me that the ages might have changed once North Carolina became a state.  As it turns out, they did.  According to The Colonial and State Records of North Carolina:

-------------------- page 358 --------------------

LAWS OF NORTH CAROLINA, 1781.

At a General Assembly begun and held at Halifax on the eighteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty one, and in the fifth year of the independence of the said State: Being the third session of the Assembly of 1780. Abner Nash, Esq., Governor.

 CHAPTER I.

An Act to regulate and establish a Militia in this State.

I. Whereas a well regulated militia is absolutely necessary for the defending and securing the liberties of a free State;

II. Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, that the militia of this State shall consist of all the effective men from sixteen to fifty years of age inclusive (except Quakers, Menonists, Dunkards, and Moravians) and shall be divided into six brigades, one in each of the districts of Edenton, Newbern, Wilmington, Halifax, Salisbury, and Hillsborough, each brigade to be commanded by a brigadier general; the militia of each county to be formed into one or more regiments, each under the command of a colonel, lieutenant colonel and two majors; every regiment shall be divided into companies of fifty rank and file at least, two sergeants, two corporals, one drummer and fifer, and each company to be under the command of a captain, lieutenant, and ensign; and that every company shall stand divided into four divisions, and serve according to the first, second, third, and fourth numbers, as they have heretofore been drawn and numbered under an Act, intituled, “An Act to establish a militia in this State.” Provided nevertheless, that where any militia man in this State shall remove himself out of one company into another, he shall produce a certificate from the captain of the company from which he came, setting forth the division to which he belonged, and the duty he has performed in that division, and the captain of the company to which he came shall cause him to be enrolled in the division he stood in before his removal; and if any person so removing shall fail to produce such certificate, when thereto required by the captain of the company to which by his removal he shall or may belong, such captain shall cause the person so failing to be enrolled in the division then liable to be called into service, and shall serve accordingly.

 III. And be it further enacted, that any militia man removing from any other State, and becoming an inhabitant or resident within the bounds of any captain's company within this State, it shall and may be lawful for such captain, and he is hereby required, within six days after the arrival of such militia man into his company, to enter him upon the muster roll of said company, and number and class him by lot; and such militia man so enrolled and classed, shall serve accordingly.

 IV. And be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that every captain shall, on or before the tenth day of April next, and once in every six months afterwards, return a muster roll of his company, divided and numbered as aforesaid, to the commanding officer of the regiment, under pain of forfeiting one thousand pounds for every default; and the commanding officer of each regiment shall make an exact return from such

Now, if you are just trying to defend your town from hostile natives, having a bunch of 60 year old men in your militia unit probably doesn't matter much.  Anyone who could shoot a gun could get the job done.  If, however, you are fighting a war, marching across the countryside for weeks on end, those same 60 year-olds might be more of a liability than an asset.  This is probably why General George Washington didn't want men over 50 (Or was it 45?  I read this a couple of weeks ago and now I don't remember.) in his army.

(And here is something crazy to think about - they were updating these lists every six months, and a grand total of three lists have survived from Hyde County.  Boy are we lucky that John Moore was on one of them!)  

Anyway, here I was thinking that this document gave a nice date range for John's age, placing it between 50 and 60, but now that doesn't seem to be the case.  It's a good thing it occurred to me to go look before I published this post!  (Asking questions is very valuable when doing genealogical research!)  Although . . . why did they bother to list the men over 50?  Just in case they needed them?  Or because they didn't get the memo that the age requirement had changed?  Maybe we should be assuming that the list was of men up to 60 years old after all!  

Altogether, there were 65 men from the Mattamuskeet district who were listed as invalids; this number might not have included some men in the age bracket to serve, though, because guess who is missing from this list?  Yep.  Malachi Jolley.  Malachi was received into membership with the Society of Friends in December 1781, and married John's daughter three months later.  Since there is no evidence that he ever owned any land in Hyde County, and since four years after this he would be listed in the Mattamuskeet district on the census, it is likely that he was already living in the area when this document was created in February of 1782.  So why does he not show up on the "under 50" list as a Quaker?  Well, maybe he was not included on the list because he had already been released from service and was thus not eligible to be drafted.  

Now here is the Troop Return for the Pungo River District of Hyde County:

Revolutionary War Troop Return:
Hyde County, NC
Pungo River District, List of Invalids and Guns
18 February 1782

(I spent four hours trying to format side-by-side images on this Blogger template and never did get it to work, so if you want to see a larger version of the front side, click here, and for the back, here.)

This one, which looks like it covered the area on both sides of the Matchapungo River, had a lot more men so it was two pages, and I want to comment on information from both sides.  On the front we can see Henry Moor, in the first column that is for men over 50 years old.  In the same section we find Joseph Cording and John Abrams, men who I am pretty sure were the husbands of two of the daughters of William Moore.  This tells us a couple of things: first, that Henry Moor, just like John Moore, was over the age of 50, meaning that he was probably of the same generation as John, and second, that Henry not only lived in the same district as the daughters of William Moore, but that he was probably of the same generation as William Moore's confirmed children.

On the back we see something very interesting - the last column of names is titled "Tories lyers out in the Swamps."  I am assuming that this means men who supported the crown and were hiding out in the swamps to either avoid persecution or to somehow subvert the cause, not men who were liars and thus couldn't be trusted.  Now, some time before the end of 1777, men were being asked to prove their allegiance to the Revolutionary cause:

Hyde County, NC
Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions
September Term 1777

At the bottom of the left-hand page this says, 

"Captain Dailey and Samuel Dailey - Being Called upon on a Suspicion of their being unfriendly to the American Cause, to take the Oath of Allegiance to this state, Positively refused to take the same and Prayed the Benefit of that Part of the Treason bill, which Intitles such as are Conscienceously Scrupulous, of Taking the Oath, to leave this State, the Same is Granted them, they Entering into Bond, in the sum of Two Thousand pounds Current Money of this State for such departure..."   

Then, at the top of the right-hand page it says, 

"Orderd that Thomas Clark, who was Summons to this as a Suspected person have Liberty to withdraw & Consider on the Oath of Allegiance, to this state till Tomorrow Morning."  

And then, later down on the page, 

"Thomas Clark being Called upon did appear and took the Oath and was Discharged. -- Thomas Clark being Sworn to Answer to Such Questions as the Court should Put to him with respect to any Persons Advising Against taking the Oath of Allegiance to this state, Declares that Duncan Smith of Beaufort County told him that the Oath was Against his Conscience or words to that Effect."

Wow.  Can you imagine living in that time?  

In May of the following year, the court ordered that all of the justices were to administer the Oath of Allegiance to all free males in their district, and in August the court declared that the justices needed to hurry up and get it done, and that anybody who refused to take the oath had to leave the state within 60 days.  And just to make sure everyone understood, the Sheriff was ordered to advertise this in each district.  Apparently each man was given a certificate when he said the oath, which could then be shown in court to prove that he had done so.  One man was ordered to leave the state, showed his certificate, and was then appointed as the county surveyor the next day.  (I guess there was no ill will once a person finally took the oath.)  It appears that some men refused to take the oath but didn't want to leave the state:

Hyde county, NC
Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions
November Term 1778

After the justices finished administering oaths, they reported eleven men who 

"not Only refused to take Said Oath but that they Consider them Dangerous to remain in this State and the Court having Consistant with law Order'd Delinquents to depart this State in Sixty days from the date of their order, or take the Oath of Allegiance within the Time Aforesaid and they are each of them Still appearing to be Delinquents. . . . Order'd that it is the Opinion of this Court that the Clerk thereof Issue the Proper Preceps to the Sheriff of this County, to apprehend the above Persons in Order that the Law be Compli'd with (with) respect to Sending them out of this State, to Europe or the west Indies. . . ."

And then, the court ordered that the names of any person refusing to take the oath be sent to the state printer to be published so that "their Names may be known to all  Friends to Liberty." 

Out of the eleven men reported by the justices, ten were on the list of Tories hiding out in the swamps four years later.  I guess their efforts to ship them off to other parts was not very successful!  

Now, one might think that asserting that such men were dangerous is a bit melodramatic, but I read recently that the Revolutionary War was essentially a civil war.  I'd never really thought of it that way before, but it makes sense.  And, as we will see when we pick up the Blackshear line again, some Tories did indeed ride down and murder Patriots.  

I wondered whether this oath was a state oath, or a national one, so I did a little digging.  It turns out that every state had an oath, and the oath was required for different things in different states (like holding office, obtaining licenses, buying or selling land, etc.).  North Carolina was one of the most restrictive, requiring the oath in order to hold office, vote, be appointed as a guardian, executor, or administrator, hold a license, practice law, make a deed of gift or a will, buy or sell or inherit land, receive a land grant, sue for debt, be subject to the regular tax rate, or bear arms.  Strangely enough, North Carolina law did not require the oath to serve as a juror, but that didn't really matter because the law did require a person refusing the oath to leave the state within 60 days and be transported out of America at their own expense.  (You can read more about this here.)  

I tried to find an image of the oath of allegiance or certificate showing it had been sworn from North Carolina, but apparently not a single copy has survived (and/or been digitized), but you can find the exact wording here.  

So, what did all of this mean for John Moore, who was a Quaker?  Quaker men did not swear oaths, and since a large percentage of the early residents of North Carolina were Quakers, the colonial assembly passed a law in 1715 which allowed Quakers to make an affirmation instead of an oath.  Under the 1715 law, men making an affirmation instead of an oath were barred from holding office, serving on a jury, or testifying as a witness, but in 1749 those restrictions were removed.

As far as militia duty is concerned, historically, North Carolina Quakers relied on a law that said that anyone failing to attend militia musters was subject to a fine.  The fine wasn't very large, as we can see from this page abstracting troop returns from the beginning of the French & Indian War:

The Colonial Records of North Carolina
Volume 5 page 161

I put this whole thing up for two reasons: one, it's super interesting and I'm totally bummed I didn't find this a couple of years ago when I was talking about our Blackshear ancestors and the French & Indian War.  Also, you'll notice more than one entry mentions the "publick store," so it sounds like the counties sometimes kept arms and ammunition even though the law required the men to come to musters already equipped.  

And there, near the bottom, you can see that the Quakers had the choice to either attend musters or pay the fine, but that the fine wasn't much of a burden.

Over the years, the Quakers repeatedly petitioned the assembly to be excused from musters and military service, and finally, in 1770, their request was granted.  The law (which you can read here) stated that Quakers, although required to be listed on militia lists, did not have to attend musters and would no longer be subject to a fine.  However, if their militia was actually called into active duty, they would be required to either "provide an able and sufficient substitute" or pay ten pounds to the chief officer of the militia so that he could hire a substitute himself.  If the Quaker man refused to pay, his property could be sold to attain the fee.  In order to qualify for this exemption, a letter or certificate from their Monthly Meeting had to be shown, which means a person didn't qualify just because they attended Quaker meetings - they had to be an officially recognized member of the Society. 

It sure was fortuitous for the Quakers that the law was passed before the Revolutionary War began, wasn't it?

But actually . . . it just dawned on me that, according to the Core Sound Monthly Meeting minutes, John Moore wasn't an officially recognized Quaker until 1781.  That means that he probably took the oath back in 1777-78, and was not exempt from militia service during the first four years of the war.  (Boy, do I wish more of those lists had survived, so we could confirm that this was true.)

But back to 1782.  There were no Quakers listed for the Pungo River militia district, so either there is a missing list, there were only three officially recognized Quakers in Hyde County in 1782, or there were others, like Malachi Jolley, who had already "served."  I have searched through Hinshaw's Quaker genealogy for any reference to Hyde County or "Attamuskeet" as it calls the eastern section of the county, though, and only found seven surnames, all between the years of 1779 and 1787.  One of those was Malachi Jolley, three others were the men - including John Moore - listed on the troop return up above as Quakers over 50, and the remaining three can be found in Mattamuskeet on the 1786 census, but their residence and/or status as a Quaker is unclear for 1782.  (I do plan to read through the entire Core Sound MM minutes - which begin in 1733 - over the next few weeks, cross referencing names with those found in Hyde County records, and I'll let you know what I found in a subsequent post.) 

And since we are looking at troop returns, I'd like to show you something I found earlier and didn't think was going to be particularly relevant:

Hyde County, NC
 Roster of Enlistments
September 1778

This is the top portion of an enlistment roster from Hyde County in the early years of the Revolutionary War.  The title, which came from the North Carolina Digital Collections, is a bit misleading, since the text says that it is "Balloted men and Volunteers," which I am interpreting to mean volunteers and those who were drafted.  The names at the bottom weren't anyone we need to look at right now, but the top portion is basically an oath of enlistment and promise to report for service in March of the following year.  Why they would give them six months, I don't know.  Maybe to put their affairs in order and make sure their families were provided for while they were gone.  But here is the really interesting thing: Although I read in numerous places (including History.com!) that the draft was for one year, I think this says that the men were pledging to serve for nine months, but if they failed to report for duty and a board of officers determined that they did not have a valid excuse, they would be required to serve for three years or the duration of the war.  This was just one year after the enlistment of Malachi Jolley/John Moore.  Now I am wondering if Malachi was drafted, failed to show up, was given a term of three years, and then had the mysterious John Moore serve as a substitute.

Okay.  Let's shift gears a bit.  Now that we are taking a closer look at all of John Moore's records, something about the first  troop return dawned on me that I didn't realize before: If John Moore was over 50 years old in 1782, that would mean that he would have had to have been born in 1732 or earlier.  Huh.  Well that's kind of weird that he wouldn't have had his first child until about 1764, isn't it?  

I thought so too, but as I was doing my research I came across a journal article called "The Relative Ages of Colonial Marriages."  I sure wish I had read the article way back when I started doing my colonial research, because, even though I kept reading that the average age of marriage for girls in the colonial era was 18 to 20 years old, and that guy, John Brickell, who visited North Carolina way back in 1737 said in his book that a girl who wasn't married until 20 was considered an old maid, this article, which was actually an analysis of marriage records from the mid 1700's, says that although 62% of girls in colonial Perquimans County, North Carolina (a county with a high population of Quakers) married for the first time between the ages of 17 and 21, 34% married first between the ages of 23 and 25, and the average age overall was 20.6 years old.  (This is partly because the ratio of males to females was well balanced and all that - read the article and don't skip the footnotes!)  Also, the average age for a man's first marriage was between 20 and 25 years old in Perquimans County, and 55% were married for the first time between the ages of 22 and 26 in the other (in more than 20% of the first marriages, the man was between 26 and 28 years old!), which is also older than what everyone seems to want to tell us.  Of course, part of those cases could be skewed due to indentured servitude, but still.  I guess this means that I shouldn't have been assuming that all of our colonial ancestors were getting married by 18 and 21!  

Anyway, if we decided to go by this new data, that would push the birth year of John's oldest daughter back to 1762-ish, which we now know would still put John at around thirty years old or older when she was born.  Unless, of course, he was well over 50 in 1782, in which case he could have been closer to forty years old.  Whether he was barely 50 years old or older, I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that there was at least one child born before Michal.  As I've mentioned before, most colonial families had between eight and eleven children, and in John's family there were only six mentioned in the Quaker records.  It should not be surprising, then, to see another possible child on the 1786 census, or to find that there had been other children who might have died or left home at some point.  

Now, last week I threw out the idea that it is possible that John Moore had a son who enlisted in Malachi Jolley's stead in 1777.  I know, there is just as much chance that the man in question had belonged to Henry or maybe even William.  But I am wondering if it would even be possible for it to have been John's son.  If he enlisted in 1777, he would have had to have been at least 16 at the time, which would put his birth year at 1761.  Oh.  Well, that's hardly older than what we are estimating for Michal, so that doesn't really change our view of John's age at this point.  What I am wondering though, is. . . . If John was between 50 and 60 years old in 1782, meaning that he was born in 1732 or earlier, in what year does he begin to show up in the records of Hyde County?  Well, according to my research notes, this is what we find:

1763 - (court minutes) John Moore records his mark:

Hyde County, NC
Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions
September Term 1763

This is the very first mention of John Moore in any of the records that I have found for Hyde County.  Notice how he is recording his own mark, not having one recorded for him, which I suspect means that he was at least 21 years old at the time.  (We have already confirmed this.)  I would also assume that this is something a man would do when he first acquired a stock of hogs.  For some that would come as part of an inheritance, for some when they had enough money to purchase them, and perhaps for some when they were making the transition to being a "planter."   (And, in case anyone missed my earlier post regarding the law pertaining to the "stealing of cattle & hoggs," you can read it here.)

Now, whether this is actually the first time John Moore was recorded in the minutes is hard to say, because the minute book is now such a mess.  We've already seen how patchy the records from the 1750's were, and many from 1759 were unreadable.  I only found one page for the entire year of 1760, some of the pages from 1761 were out of order and many were of very poor quality, three of the pages from 1762 were basically unreadable, and all but four pages from 1763 are missing.  Three of those, including this entry about John recording his mark, were scattered among the pages at the beginning of the microfilm.  March and June of 1764 were on just one page (the same page) and there was only one page for the December term of that year.  1766 was completely missing, and 1767, which was originally part of a different volume, had just one page on the microfilm.  Yeah, chances are we've missed something.

So.  John was a minimum of thirty-one years old when we first find him in the records of Hyde County.  Normally, this would make me say that it might indicate that he had moved in from elsewhere, but I think there are too many holes in the records for us to make that assumption with any confidence.  The next document we find for him is a record of a land transaction three years later:

1766 - (deed records)  John Moore acquires land in Mattamuskeet: 

Hyde County Deed Book B pg. 202
Jacob Tuly to John Moore
December 1766

John Moore purchased 100 acres of land bordering the north side of Lake "Arromuskeet" in December of 1766.  He paid 42 pounds proclamation money, which just meant paper money.  (Sometimes people paid with paper notes issued by Virginia, which was always specified in the deeds, so if it just says proclamation money, that means notes issued by the colony of North Carolina.  You can see an example in the University of North Carolina's Historic Moneys exhibit.)  

The following page in the book shows that this deed was proved in court during the December 1766 term, but of course all of the pages from the minute book have been lost for that year.  So, see?  We now have proof that we are missing entries for John Moore, so there is no telling what else he was up to that we just don't have the evidence for.

And now we (finally!!) get to John Moore's trade.  This deed says that John Moore was a resident of Hyde County (well of course, because we found him in the court minutes in 1763) and that he was a joiner.  A joiner was a carpenter who made specialized things out of wood in a workshop.  They made things like furniture, staircases, doors & window frames, and cabinets.  Joiners were also the ones who made ornamental moldings.  They might make these for homes, or for ships.  Ships, you ask?  I discovered while reading the deeds that there were quite a few shipbuilders in the area during this time, and according to the book Shipbuilding in North Carolina 1688-1918, there were numerous shipyards along the Matchapungo River as well.  Maybe John Moore had a workshop in Woodstock town or near the river where he made the finishings for the ships being built.  

Remember how John Moore purchased an auger at the estate sale of Phillip Jolley?  That might have been a useful tool for a joiner.  And remember how he left all of his "mechanics tools" to his son Gideon in his will?  Since that is what woodworking and carpentry tools were called way back when, that also makes perfect sense that a joiner would have a collection of such things.

I don't recall seeing anyone else listed as a joiner in the records, so there probably weren't very many men competing for business with John Moore, meaning he could charge a hefty sum, meaning he could save 42 pounds to buy 100 acres of land.  

Now, you might think it strange for a joiner to just up and purchase 100 acres of land, but you wouldn't believe how many tradesmen were buying and selling land in Hyde County during the second half of the 1700's.  There were coopers and blacksmiths and pilots and ship's captains and peddlers and heck, Roger Moore was a cordwainer (or sadler?) and he owned more than 400 acres.  It was like everyone wanted to invest in land or something.  So it isn't weird at all that a joiner would purchase 100 acres of land in Hyde County, North Carolina in 1766.  Maybe some of those men bought the land and sold the lightwood on it to other men so they could make tar for sale. (Remember the dispute between Roger Moore and Daniel Wells?)  Maybe they bought land and leased it to other people for other uses.  Maybe they needed someplace for their milk cows and hogs to roam so they could start making their own cheese and bacon instead of purchasing it from others.  (At Phillip Jolley's estate sale, 200 "weight" of bacon was sold!)  Whatever the reasons, it is very clear from the deed records that a lot of men owned large amounts of land and still practiced their trade.

Oh, wait.  Didn't men have to be landowners to vote back then?  Hold on . . . . yes.  In fact, North Carolina was the very last state to remove this qualification for voting - in 1859!  Well, then.  That completely explains why so many tradesmen owned land.  So maybe, since they owned land for voting purposes, they just kept hogs and sold lightwood and leased it out and did any number of other things to make that land earn a profit while they still practiced their trade!

And since we are talking a bit about trades, I'd like to point out another misconception that I somehow got into my head during my educational upbringing:  I always thought I "knew" that trades were generally passed down from father to son.  This may have been true of some times and/or places, but not in 18th century Hyde County.  I saw many deeds where land was transferred from father to son and they were named as having entirely different trades.  I think society was much less rigid than we tend to think, so some sons learned a trade from their father, but others might have been given given the choice of trades to learn, or maybe men just exchanged sons with their friends and acquaintances.  The staggering number of orphans being bound out to learn a trade during those times practically guaranteed that a large number would be brought up with a trade different from their fathers.  

So, looking at potential fathers for John Moore. . . .There was Roger, who might have been a father, or might have been a brother.  He was a cordwainer or sadler, depending on what we want to believe based on the contradicting records.  We don't know what William Moore's trade was, because by the time we find a recorded deed for him he is already named as a planter.  But remember - I can't say this enough - during the 1700's in North Carolina a "planter" was not necessarily a plantation owner.  Most of the men named as planters in deeds had no slaves.  None.  A planter during that time was just somebody who sold cash crops, and the major cash crop in eastern North Carolina during that time was naval stores, like the tar that William Moore got from burning wood in his tar kiln.  He could very well have practiced a trade prior to getting into the business of producing cash crops.  He did leave his woodworking tools to his son in his will - these were his cooper's tools, axes, and saws - so maybe he had originally been a cooper.  I'm sure some of those tools could have been used by a joiner as well.  

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that we shouldn't say Oh, John couldn't have been in the same family as William and Roger Moore because they all had different trades.  That's just not the way it worked back then.

The fact that John Moore appeared to purchase his first piece of land in 1766, when he would have been in his mid to upper thirties, fits nicely with the fact that he practiced a trade, since he would have had to have time to save up the money to make the purchase.  Perhaps by 1766 John had four children with another on the way, maybe also an apprentice or two, and he needed space to build a bigger house and workshop.  Maybe he just saw how lucrative the whole naval stores business could be and decided to get in on the action.  Or maybe he was getting tired of all of those new laws and taxes the British government was imposing (you know, like the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, the Quartering Act, and the Stamp Act) and thought it might be a good idea to make sure he would be able to vote.  Since this deed says that he was already a resident of Hyde County, he had to have been living somewhere before this.  Maybe he was renting a house in the town of Woodstock or near one of the shipyards, or maybe he was living on his father's property, or even on a piece of land given to him by his father or one that he himself purchased previously and the deed record has somehow been lost. 

The next time John Moore shows up in the records was, once again, three years later.  But I think we are going to save that until next time - it turns out that I have found eighteen records, all occurring before 1778, and this post is already long enough.  So, next time: the life of John Moore as seen through the lens of (mostly) court records.  See you then!

 

                                                                                                                                                - Therese