| Born
on the 31st of October in Scio, Harrison Co..
Ohio - Thomas was a young boy of about eight
years when his father James moved the family out
to Collinsville, Madison Co., Illinois in 1847 to
join up with his Uncle Joseph Moore who like
grandfather Eli Moore, was a blacksmith. Thomas' father, who was
also a teacher in Ohio began making cow bells
with his brother Joseph in Collinsville. How long
they remained in Collinsville is not known, but
the family was enumerated in the 1850 Madison County, IL Census.
Sometime between
the birth of his youngest brother Joe in 1853 and
the year 1860, his parents had parted company due
to their differences over the Civil War. Thomas,
his mother Rebecca, and his youngest brother Joe
were living in the St. Louis household of a
police officer, Gabriel Darlington, in 1860 at which time Tom worked
as an ice dealer. His father James, went south
where he worked as a tutor on a plantation and
later lived in Texas.
Taking up the call
for the Union, Tom enlisted in the 33rd Missouri
Volunteers and married just before leaving in
1861, young Clarissa Pilcher, the daughter of the
late Ezekiel Pilcher and his widow Louisa
Ballard. - He was shot in the head and left
for dead at the Battle of Helena on the 4th of
July 1863, but was taken to a Memphis hospital
where he recovered and went home to Clarissa.
Thomas and
Clarissa were the parents of eight children.
Their first two, Emily Ellen & Minnie, died
in their infancy. The following six all lived to
adulthood. Tom and Clara lived the remainder
of their lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Clarissa
passed away at the young age of forty-four, just
two years after completing medical school and
becoming a homeopathic doctor.
Thomas lived in
the care of his daughter, Mamie. He died 16 Jun
1915 and in 1916 Mamie finally married. Her
sister Mabel began corresponding and eventually
donating papers to the Missouri Historical
Society, some of which included Civil War
correspondence and journals of the early Missouri
fur trade.
In 1993, Jeanette
Lane and her daughter Patricia Davidson-Peters,
added other letters and artifacts to this
collection, known as the Thomas Anderson Moore
Collection.
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