NOTES ON MY BEGINNINGS BY MARIE E. MOORE
My first recollections is living on a farm in Wayne County Indiana. This farm was situated on a road called Hunnicutt, named after the Hunnnicutt’s our next door neighbors. They owned a beautiful big house with a big fireplace in the living room made with a marble face and hearth.
I must have been very young because Mrs. Hunnicutt gave me a set of blocks to play with on a lovely plush rug in front of the fireplace. My mother told me I picked up the block that had a church on it and held in my left hand while I played with the other blocks with my right hand. I remember mother had to take it away from me, when we left. Mrs. Hunnicutt told her that meant I would cleave to the Church all my life.
My father bought a book from a salesman called “The Life of Christ” when I was three years old. It was kept on an antique stand never read only dusted and put back. I remember being curious about it. I would thumb through the pages of it when I dusted it. I never attempted to read it until I was nine. I was reading everything I found when I took the book of Christ off the stand and read it through. I remember crying my heart out when I read the persecution and death of Christ. I fell in love with Jesus then and I have loved him ever since. The precepts that Jesus taught on the Mt. of Olives seemed to be something I had heard before and I believe them sincerely.
We lived on this farm until I was almost 7 years old. We moved to Cambridge City, two miles from the farm. I remember many things about the farm, a red brick house with a breeze way, open to the south and big wooden doors to the north. In the breezeway was a big Iron pump that I couldn’t pump until I was about five years old. The water was cold it made my teeth ache. The water ran into a trough into a springhouse where my mother kept her cream and milk cold and sweet and the butter she churned from the cream. She had a churn that looked like a small barrel with a tight lid that clamped on with iron clamps. It had a handle and sat on a platform with two sturdy leg braced with wood between them. I sat on a stool and turned the handle from the time I was around four years old. The handle turned the churn over and over. I remember it would take quite awhile and I would get a little restless. I would ask my mama is it butter and she told me when it went ca-thud it was butter, but I had to turn a few more turns to get the butter gathered, then I was through. Mother would take the butter out with a wooden paddle in a big wooden bowl and work all the buttermilk out and wash it with cold water until there was no milk left in it. Then she sprinkle salt and work that in. She said if you have any milk left it would turn the butter sour. I remember how I loved the butter milk with corn bread or ginger bread. She made the most delicious soda biscuits I ever ate. She showed me how to open the biscuits with- out making them soggy. They would open so flaky, they melted in your mouth, with home- made butter and jellies or jams, that she made herself. This little girl believed her mother was the greatest cook on earth and still does. She made the most delicious three layer chocolate cakes with carmel icing or served with whipped cream. No wonder I was chubby!
The following picture was updated by Sharon Ogzewalla - Marie was dress in blue silk dress when Howard first met her.
Mother baked her yeast bread and kept in a 50 lb. Lard can so it would be moist. She had old white sheets to wrap it in. You see in those days we did not have wax paper or paper towels or toilet tissue and tissues. I remember Mama washing and boiling the ragged sheets when she felt they needed it. You see there was butter on the crust and the rags would get to smelling strong. I remember her boiling the dish towel & cloths. She had a copper boiler that she heated her wash water in, she would also boil her white thins in the same boiler. The wash water was rain water from a cistern which was soft water. She had a hand washer with corrugated slats put on metal to hold the slats in place. Then there was a kind of a rocker that fitted in the washer with slats that rumbled the clothes clean. Of course you worked it by hand. There was a wringer that turned with a crank that would have to wring the clothes by hand. It was hard on buttons so we would have to turn them inside out so the wring would not pop them off.
SAMUEL, ORPHA CRAIG & MARIE MOORE
AGE 20
Picture researched and submitted by Leah Huddleston 2010
Marie Moore was born to Samuel Moore a nd Orpha Craig Moore 21 April, 1907 in Cambridge City, Indiana she died in January 1984.
We know that the Moore’s were not Catholic, since they came from Northern Ireland and those settling that area were definitely protestant and were from Scotland, which is why Jane Hamilton referred to herself as Scotch-Irish in the Moore Family history.
Andrew Moore, Marie’s grandfather immigrated from Ireland in 1852. Jane Hamilton and Andrew were married in Newtonards, Down, Ireland in 1850. I do not know why Andrew and Jane made their home in Cambridge City, an hour or so away from the Moore Family hub; the majority of whom settled in and around the Oxford, Ohio area.
ANDREW MOORE’S CITIZENSHIP PAPERS SENT TO ME BY DEBORAH HUDDLESTON GORMAN
Andrew also served in the Civil War enlisting in the Indiana 124th Infantry. If records, or writings had been kept on this side of the family we might have learned what split this family apart, for Jane and her children were not living with Andrew in the 1870 census records. The census records of 1860 show a David Moore age 1, but I did not find mention of him in later censuses. I can only speculate that a death of a child, and the father’s enlistment in 1864, may have been hard on the family.
Samuel Moore, Marie’s father did not marry until he was 48 years of age. He and Orpha married 4 March, 1904. Orpha had been married before to Samuel Griffith, by whom she had 2 sons. Charles M. and Delmar C. Griffith. Delmar would have been 12 years old when Marie was born. I do not know the reason for the divorce from Samuel. My grandmother never talked about her half brothers, or any of her family for that matter.
Despite the fact that Samuel was 18 years Orpha’s senior, he outlived her until 1930. Orpha died in 1922 from cancer leaving 15 year old Marie who headed to Kentucky four days after she turned 16 to marry Howard.