Clarissa
Vanbergen Pilcher was born in Springfield,
Illinois on the 7th of October to Ezekiel and
Louisa (Ballard) Pilcher, formerly of Fayette
county, KY and Grayson county, Virginia,
respectively.
She
was the youngest child of ten children, her
mother having had two sets of twins - all of
which survived. At the age of thirteen, her
father died while they were living in Woodburn,
Macoupin county, Illinois, and her mother and
most of the family went to St. Louis, Missouri
where Clarissa probably met her husband, Thomas
A. Moore, son of James & Rebecca (Updegraph)
Moore. She married Tom at the age of 16 and just
before he began serving in the Civil War for the
33rd Missouri Volunteers.
Letters
between Clarissa and Tom were donated to the
Missouri Historical Society in the Thomas
Anderson Moore Collection. Tom's last letter to
her might have been the last she ever heard of
him except a passing soldier was said to have
found a whisper of a breath in him lying on the
battlefield on the 4th of July at Helena, AR and
he was taken to a Memphis hospital where he
recovered.
After
months, Tom returned to Clara and they began
their family. Their first two children, Minnie
and Emily Ellen, both died in infancy, but they
afterwards had six children who survived.
In
1886 Clarissa went to medical school in St. Louis
and became a Homeopathic doctor. She passed away
a few years later on April 7th 1890 at the time
her youngest daughter, Beulah, was only three.
Her husband Tom survived her by many years,
passing away in June of 1915.
The
above photo was re-made from a glass negative
retrieved in 1992 from the family trunk found at
the family home in St. Louis, Missouri which had
once been owned by Clarissa's daughter, Mabel
Grace Jones.
Photo
contributed by and posted in memory of my cousin
Gail Stroud whose generosity in sharing made the
Moore & Pilcher web site possible.
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