Uncle George

MOORE AND MUNN FAMILY

Uncle George

This took place in Fort Worth, Texas in about 1911 when I was about nine or ten years old. Annie Moore married Black Shirley. He was in his early 90’s, and very old. However, she needed someone to help support her children. So she married him. Grandfather Moore was quite a bit younger than his son-in-law, Black Shirley, and used to kid him a lot. I was living with them at the time of this story.
There was a great commotion about an Old Soldiers’ Reunion. There were about 20 or 30 soldiers there. Uncle Black Shirley was invited because his father-in-law was in some of the battles. They had a meeting in the morning. Many Confederate soldiers were telling their war stories. Uncle Black Shirley was the only Union soldier there.
They invited Uncle Black Shirley to speak. His father-in-law, John Lafayette Moore, spoke too. He hesitated being old and hard to get around. Finally, Uncle Black Shirley wobbled up there to speak.

Here is what he said:

Old soldiers, women and children. I want to thank you for inviting me to this Old Soldiers’ Reunion. I believe this is the first reunion I have ever attended. If you will allow me, I would like to relate how I feel about the War and what was happening in the War Between the States from 1861 – 1865. I came from Virginia what they called a “Blue Bellied Yankee. “I was inducted into the war in the beginning. I was always active all through the siege of the War between the North and South, which I don’t feel should have happened in the first place. If you Confederate people had had the money to buy food, and gotten a lot more to eat, and money for guns and ammunition, I believe you “Yellow Bellied Confederates” would have won the War.
At that time all the soldiers stood and gave the deafening Confederate yell. They yelled so long, that he finally wobbled down to his seat. Everyone came up to him to shake his hand. He reminded them he was just a common man like them.
I wanted to relate this which was so close to my heart.

CONFEDERATE REUNION
UNCLE GEORGE’S STORIES

In the early 1980’s I had a correspondence with Grandfather Melvin Harris Munn’s brother, my great-uncle George Munn. I had met him when our family went to Arkansas on a vacation in 1959.
He agreed to make some tapes in 1983 telling some of the most thrilling and exciting stories about the Munn and Moore families. At the time he was quite elderly, in his 80’s but managed to do a great job so that we might learn more about our family. The stories include Uncle Aden nearly being scalped by Indians, attacks of panthers, blood oaths, Confederate battles, plantations, Cherokee Indian ancestors, and more. He ends with a beautiful prayer for all the descendants of the Munn and Moore families.
The stories are mostly true but some are more romantic tales than true facts, and caused our professional genealogist, Lola Sorensen, hours of dead-end research. For example, she has researched the Moore family extensively, and has yet to find the connection to the Cherokee Indian Maiden so prevalent in our family history. These conflicting stories continue. We have connected our Munns to Scottish origins. However, Uncle George tells of English ancestors. The genealogical research combines these romantic stories with fact to discover what really happened. What does one expect as stories are passed from generation to generation!
I put these stories into the computer just the way Uncle George spoke. So they aren’t full sentences, and aren’t always grammatically correct. However, you now have the most fascinating family legends and stories that would have been lost had Uncle George not shared them with us on tapes that used to lie in boxes hidden away.

The Moores could have come from Scotland. My grandfather, John Lafayette Moore, thought he was half- Scottish. In the 18th Century they settled in South Carolina, then settled in Georgia. That was where my great grandfather Moore reared his children. The grandfather who came over from Scotland also reared a large family. My grandfather settled in Tennessee until 1835, although he was born in South Carolina. His grandparents came to Arkansas with their parents. They had several teams and wagons, with extra horses and mules. They crossed the Mississippi around Durango, Mississippi by ferry boat.
(The following is Great-Uncle George’s version of how Andrew J. Moore married an Indian princess. It has been researched and is not true but was a great story.)
They landed in Hamburg, Arkansas, and camped about four miles out. This was my great-grandfather, Andrew J. Moore. At the place where they were making camp they noticed a large reservation of Cherokee Indians located nearby. They soon learned the Indians were highly educated Cherokees. They were also traveling from the Carolinas. They were being forced to migrate to Oklahoma. So my great-grandfather Moore met an Indian maiden, and he loved her very much.She was a beautiful Cherokee Indian maiden about 16 years old. Finally, he asked her father if he could marry her. His father told him it would cost quite a few horses and mules for the hand of this maiden. My great-grandfather said he would have the maiden whether they agreed or not. No
one had much because they were traveling. However, the Indians took five horses or mules for her hand. Our great- grandfather was married in Hamburg. Soon they left in covered wagons to the southwest portion of Arkansas, in Ouachita County near Camden near Poison Springs. That was where my great-grandfather reared at least seven children, all boys as I remember. That is where and why we are descendants of the Cherokee Indian race.
My grandfather was a boy in the middle of a large family. He was born in 1848, that was about 14 years before the War began with the North and South. Once that war began my grandfather had two brothers older than he who joined the Confederate Army, Jack and George. They were in the southeastern part of the United States, and fought together. Jack, got injured and died in middle age due to wounds. He was buried at Camden where other brothers were buried. He has a Confederate marker at the grave. In 1864 near the ending of the war my grandfather, Moore was determined to do what he could to help out in the war. He was too young to join as a soldier, at 16 years of age, so near Prescott he enlisted with the Confederate Army to drive a chuck wagon and ammunition wagon. He served several months as a driver but was not inducted. However, when they had the battle at Poison Springs he did shoulder a rifle, and was in that battle in 1864. That was where he remembered, in detail, when he and the troops were coming into southern Arkansas from Deanne, Arkansas.

MOORE FAMILY

Somewhere around 1864 the North were entering around Prescott and Deanne. They had several battles and were chasing the Confederate Army. They came into Deanne outside Prescott and that was where they hired my grandfather to drive the chuck wagon and ammunition wagon. They came on down through the southern part of Arkansas. The Union had a large army, four or five soldiers to one Confederate soldier. While the Confederates were retreating, they would not fight. They went toward Poison Springs and decided to take a stand and try to defeat the northern army. When my grandfather fed his mules water he discovered it was poison; the mules only played with the water with their big old lips. These thirsty mules would not take one swallow of the water. Some of the men had drank some of the water and were becoming ill. My grandfather never did relate whether any lives were lost, but they did become deathly sick. The Confederate officers camped by the springs for rest until the next day when they would move on.
Meanwhile, they were very mad at the carpetbaggers of the northern army for poisoning the spring. But since the southern army had some very shrewd leaders they decided they would retreat back a quarter of a mile because they knew the northern army was still coming from Deanne. The Confederate Army had plenty of places to seek cover on three sides of the springs figuring the northern army would come there. When the northern army came there they didn’t drink any of the water. They were going to stay there and rest. So they attacked the Union Army at night and scattered the army. They had quite a pitched battle and the Union Army were badly beaten. Our side captured 106 loads of corn loaded onto farm wagons and several dozen horses and mules. The Union knew they were whipped. This was one of the greatest battles fought in the South.
Around 24 years-old my grandfather Fate ( John Lafayette) Moore met Roxie Ann Daniell. She was around 16 years old, and he fell deeply in love with her. This was four or five years after the War. Finally, they married around 1871. My mother, Nettie (Camilla Paranet) Moore, was
their first born. My grandmother’s family came from North Carolina, then later they came to Arkansas about the same time as my dad’s family. Her father, Joe Daniell, made strong drinks for the Confederate Army, a distilled operator of whiskey. He was one of the most talented distillers anywhere in this area, although my grandmother said he very seldom took any of the strong drinks he made.
My mother married around 18 years of age, one-quarter Cherokee Indian girl (so they said.) She married my father, Thomas Franklin Munn, in 1891. They had four children, Melvin Harris, Thomas Owen, George Washington and Eunice. My father was born in 1857 and had been married before to a lady named Molly Morris. His children were Arthur and Bynum. Then they divorced. My parents married in 1891. My father passed away in 1904 when I was six years-old.
After my grandfather Munn passed away I was very lonesome for many years. Then, I had the good fortune of living with my grandfather Moore and Uncle Jabe when I was fifteen years old around 1911. We lived west of Ft. Worth in Azel, Texas, on a farm. We only lived there about eleven months because it was so dry. My grandfather Moore did not like Texas so he pulled up stakes and moved back to Nevada County. So I moved back to Nevada County with my grandfather Moore in 1912. At that time Aunt Linnie was still single. She and Erben (Josiah Erben) Kimbrough were married that year and moved back to Azel, Texas.
I loved my grandparents (Moore) very much. My grandfather died in 1913 at 73 years old. My grandmother lived until she was 93 or 94 years old, dying in 1946. I loved my grandmother Moore as she took me under her wing when I was just a boy and taught me how to get along with people. She loved me very dearly and I love my grandmother Moore. It was great to know both of my ancestors even though I was very young. I am so grateful to the Lord God Almighty for knowing three or four generations of the family.

My first school was Sweetwater School, a one room schoolhouse. At six years old I fell in love with a blonde haired girl. We went to a picnic in the summer of 1902, the Fourth of July, and my first experience ever courting a girl. We walked around hand in hand just like old people. This was the first time I had ever seen artificial ice and soda pop. Naturally, it was quite an experience.
My father decided the sand storms were so bad in southwest Texas in the spring of the year that he agreed to move back to our home state close to where we lived before. He farmed eight acres of land for two years. On March 4th 1904 my father had a severe heart stroke and left my mother with four small children. My baby sister did not even remember her father being only two years old at the time.
From then on my mother farmed. W.C. Meadows came to see my mother, and they married. W.C. Meadows had five children of his own. The next year, in 1906, we moved to another farm called the Billy Boy Place. From that farm we moved to the Greason Ranch near Prescott. We stayed there one year, a combination ranch and farm. That fall we decided to move to Fort Worth, where my mother had a sister living. We all moved in two covered wagons. We finally landed twenty-one miles west of Fort Worth after being on the road for 21 days. He rented this place from Jeff Austin for seven years. I spent 1911 and 1912 with my grandfather and grandmother Moore, Aunt Linnie and Uncle Jabe.
My mother and her husband separated. My mother asked me to come back home to help her farm near Reno, Texas. We farmed cotton and hay but it was awful to be so poor as we were. We lost everything and had to start over from scratch. In the fall of 1915 we saw an ad in the Dallas morning newspaper. They had land in New Mexico in Pecos Valley for homesteading. We all became enthused especially the brothers. You had to be 21 years-old to farm 160 acres of land, so we could do it. So we set out to Hallis, Oklahoma where we picked cotton. My first cousin, Allen Munn, was with us and he got pneumonia. We almost ran out of money so we decided not to homestead and go back to our home state of Arkansas. Near Christmas Day in 1915 we rented a farm.
On our return I fell deeply in love with an Irish girl, Willie Andrews, and married. We had a wonderful life together. Our oldest daughter, Helen, was born during the first World War. One year later my wife gave birth to our second child, Dorothy. We were proud parents of two beautiful baby girls. In 1923 we moved to El Dorado, Arkansas. I had my own ice delivery business. It was during this time I met Uncle Jimmy Harris who told me about Grandfather James Munn. (They lived next to each other in Holly Spring, Mississippi.) Willie (my wife of many years) died June 13, 1980. Then I married Bertha Irene Lacy in 1982.
I hope you get a great kick out of knowing that your ancestors as far as I knew were not horse thieves or violated the law except in minor things. You can be proud of the Moore and Munn names. May God bless you and the Moore and Munn families wherever they may be throughout this great land of ours.

Uncle George’s prayer for his kindred:

God bless this tape we pray wherever it is recorded that it might bring some information to my family that wouldn’t have been given to them otherwise. We ask thee our Father and our God to care for the Munn and Moore generation of people until the end of time and throughout eternity. This we pray God and direct all of us throughout the remainder of our lives and will ever and ever give thanks the rest of our lives. Forever and ever. Amen.