Page News & Courier
Heritage and Heraldry
So just who is this upstart columnist from Georgia?
Article of April 2, 1998
Lets undo the tie (not that I often wear a tie) and allow the author some indulgences on the column for a moment. So here I am at my computer desk, my cats at my feet, books and files scattered all about me (as my wife often points out as an incredible mess) answering e-mail from people all over the place since I started writing this column. Ironically, the majority of the people that I respond to are those that either trace their ancestry to or have moved from Page County several years ago. I have received a handful of e-mail from people residing immediately in Page County as well as a handful of written correspondences. Oh and by the way, I'm not the Robert Moore that graduated from Page County High School in 1962, that's my dad, who now, after 30 years in the Marine Corps, resides once again in the county as the lone Moore of the "Blinky" Moore line of descendants remaining in Page.
Therefore, we have established that the circulation rate for the Page News & Courier is alive and well outside the county lines. However, I have to stop and think for a moment that maybe this upstart that writes the column and resides at a Georgia address doesn't appear to be from Page after all. Well, to answer this pressing curiosity, he is in fact of Page County origin.
First of all, the bulk of my ancestry carries common Page County surnames such as Roudabush, Koontz, Strole, Kibler, Shuler, Kite, Emerson, Bell Dorraugh (where did that surname actually originate anyway?), Ham, Nicholson, Richards, Cave, Knight, Hilliard, Offenbacker, Good, Stoneberger, Mayes, Painter, Purdham, Huffman, Nauman, Taylor, and Aleshire to name a few. It is the surname of "Moore" that alienates me in a sense from the mainstream of common Page County names. So to rectify this I will give a quick "background" check of myself.
Sometime between 1880 and 1884, John Howard "Blinky" Moore, a native of Clear Spring, Maryland, left home for Kentucky where he met Mollie Davison. To make a long story short, they married in Kansas, attempted, while Mollie was very pregnant, to go west, lost the baby along the way and, understandably disgruntled, returned east.
Around 1888, Howard was working on the Shenandoah Valley Railroad and saw the farm land that compelled them to eventually settle on Naked Creek in Page County. After moving to Shenandoah four children were born to Howard and Mollie including my great-grandfather, Hume. Howard was in a number of ventures in Shenandoah and worked for the Norfolk & Western R.R. and became a member of the Freemasons at Ashlar Lodge #125 in Shenandoah.
So that's the start of it all, but why am I in Georgia? Well, being a military brat and another "nomadic" adventurer of the Moore line, after some time in two colleges in North Carolina, I joined the Navy about nine years ago, and am now stationed at King's Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia. I've kept myself continually busy with Virginia history over the past eleven years with writing projects in the Virginia Regimental Histories Series, and freelancing for Civil War Times, Illustrated and Blue and Gray Magazine.
Oh and by the way, keep those e-mails and letters coming, it adds to my long list of ideas for articles for the column. Speaking of which, could that individual with information of Captain R.S. Parks write me again, I fell prone to the computer glitch and lost a few e-mail addresses.
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