Category: Research

One of my fellow geneabloggers, Tonia Kendrick, gave me the idea a long time ago to make timelines for my ancestors. This weekend I also watched a webinar presented by Marian Pierre-Louis about breaking down your brick walls. These two things are going hand in hand when I bring up William H Moore. I have so much yet to learn about my earliest known Moore ancestor. I’m hoping that by having a clear timelime I can pinpoint the gaps in information, of which I’m sure there are many.

 William H Moore

(1836-1928)

July 1836 – William H Moore is born in Northern Ireland. I get this date from the 1900 census. However, when looking for William I often let the date go between 1835 and 1840. I say Northern Ireland because in 1930, after William had passed away, ALL of his children listed their parents as being born in Northern Ireland. This is important because it was in 1921 that Northern Ireland was established as it’s own entity. The 1930 census is the first US Census that would reflect this change.

1858-1859 – It is sometime in this period that William immigrated to the United States from Ireland. I have no entry date for him, or even an entry point. Just the two separate years William gives in 1900 and 1910 as his immigration years.

Around 1863 – married Mary E Starret. Also in the 1900 Census, William gave a statement that he was married for 37 years. Doing a little math, that dates back to around 1863. This makes sense because their first child was born in 1864.

September 1865 – William and Mary’s first child, Mary J Moore, is born in New York.

Around 1867 – moved to Chicago, Illinois. 1867 is the first year that William appears in the Chicago city directories, that I know of. The only address I am positive of in Chicago is 56 Foster. He is listed as a stair builder/carpenter.

February 1868 – William and Mary’s second child, William H Moore Jr., is born in Chicago.

December 1869 – William and Mary’s third child, John R Moore, is born in Chicago.

1870 – William’s family appears in the census, living at 56 Foster, in Chicago Illinois. I used the neighbors on the census, to confirm my William in the city directories.

October 1871 – William and Mary’s fourth and final child (my 2nd Great Grandfather), Robert James Moore, is born in Illinois. I am unsure if he was actually born in Chicago. I wrote to Chicago about a birth record and they couldn’t find one. They said it was just around that time that they started to record birth records, so that didn’t mean that Robert wasn’t born there, just that there wasn’t an official birth record.

1880 – The Moore’s show up at 583 Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. I don’t know how long they were back in New York because I don’t have a confirmed address for them before 583 Myrtle Ave.

1888 – The Moore’s move to 263 Sumpter Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.

1895 – William H Moore shows up at a second address in addition to his home address. The address is 1567 Broadway, Brooklyn, New York. He is still listed as a carpenter. This is the only year he shows up at this address in the directory. His sons will take over this address for their printing business.

April 1896 – William’s son, Robert, marries Mary E Johnson in Brooklyn, New York.

October 1896 – William’s wife, Mary, dies in Brooklyn after a long illness.

1903 – The Moore’s move to a new household at 559 Decatur Street. They stay there for at least the next 10 years, maybe longer.

Around 1904 – William’s son, William Jr, marries.

1905 – William is still in Brooklyn, New York per the census and city directories.

1910 – William is still in Brooklyn, New York per the census and city directories.

1915 – William’s son, John, marries.

1920 – William and his daughter, Mary, are now living in Caldwell, New Jersey.

November 1925 – William’s son, Robert, dies.

July 1928 – William H Moore dies, most likely in Caldwell, New Jersey.

Personal Notes: It’s been challenging to research William H Moore. Not impossible, just challenging. If I was a little more mobile, I’d be able to travel the the Municipal Archives in NYC and possibly have many breakthroughs. However, that’s just not the case right now. I’ve been sending away for records as I’m able, but a lot of times I come up blank because I haven’t nailed down a good section of years for the events and the commonality of their names. 

After doing this timeline, I can definitely see my gaps! Now I hope to fill in the missing years before William and Mary married, and then learn the exact timeline of when and why they went to Chicago.

I’m not sure if Genealogy Fog Brain is an actual condition or if I just have regular Fog Brain. Lately though, I find myself being a little… slower to make things click in my brain. It might be that I’m slowly but surely kicking my caffeine habit, it might be the 5 days a week of exercise I’m trying to adhere to. Who knows why it’s happening, the important thing is that it is in fact happening.

I recently had to “repair” my Windows installation. Except a “repair” doesn’t fix my recurring problem, so I ended up doing a new installation of Windows. I know it’s probably overkill on my part but when the problem spread itself to Roots Magic, I’d had enough. So now that my computer is cleaned out of most of the clutter on the main drive, I’m back to working with my family files. My only issue is that with Fog Brain, I haven’t been able to wrap my head around much. So instead of getting nothing done, I’m working on going through and searching for alternate sources on my Dad’s side of the family. Eventually, I’ll find that one clue that leads me to a discovery of something that’s going to break down the walls for me. Not brick walls, but the wooden ones that have built themselves in front of me. With a little hard work, and a hammer, I should be able to get them down!

One of the things I know is that my first known Moore ancestor, William H Moore, had three sons and a daughter. The daughter, Mary, took care of him for his whole life after her mother passed away after a lengthy illness. The logic tells me that she most likely took care of her sick mother too. The youngest son, Robert (my great-great grandfather), was a house painter. The other two boys, apparently went into the printing business. It wasn’t until I discovered the Moores in the Brooklyn City Directories that I realized the two brothers might have been working together. I knew that William H Moore Jr was a lifelong compositor/printer.  What I was unaware of, was his brother John’s involvement in his printing business.

Today I did a Google Search for “William Moore, printer, 1567 Broadway” just for fun. It led me to a Google Book listing for “Printing Trades Blue Book for the Greater New York and Surrounding Towns Edition“. You can read the excerpt in the image above. What’s interesting is it gives an established date of 1898. It also shows the the brothers had a partnership. I had always assumed that William was the more involved of the two. That’s what I get for assuming! After combing through the Brooklyn Directories, I found something today that I should have noticed months ago.

At the end of every MOORE section in the Brooklyn Directories, there is an entry for MOORE Bros, printers, 1567 Broadway. Oops. Not only does it happen every year from 1898 to 1913, but the brothers are shown working out of that address for the previous 3 years also. So while they might not have established their partnership until 1898, they were already working in that space, as printers as early as 1895. Another fun fact is that their father, William H Moore Sr, was also doing business at that address in 1895. So maybe their father was using the space for his carpenter business, but after the death of his wife in 1896, he left the business space for his sons? I don’t know, there I go assuming again!

Almost a year ago (Yikes!), I posted about a bad habit of mine. I’ve tried my hardest to beat this habit, but I learned today that it’s still there. I’m admitting it for the second time. I sometimes have a hard time checking the whole page of a source. There I’ve said it out loud. I’ve admitted it to the internet masses. I have learned to check the whole precinct of a census, however this hasn’t bled over into the other sources I use. Which are a lot.

In my defense, sometimes things don’t seem important at the time. To extend that thought, sometimes you just don’t have enough information at that time to know something is important.

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