Featured Family Friday: Commodore Worth Moore and Nora Roberts

Commodore Worth “Commie” Moore was the next younger brother of my great-grandfather Harlston Perrin Moore. They were the sons of William Spencer Moore and Emily Tarrant. When I started work on this family I greatly benefited from research done by my third cousin Jo Ann and recently I have had some additional luck in getting some much needed leads from C. W. Moore’s obituary. Through a local researcher in Greenville County I have ordered about 180 obituaries (following about 40 more some months previously) dealing with descendants of Samuel Moore of Greenville and their spouses. Some of the obituaries have not added much to what I know, but a number of them have provided invaluable information leading to even more discoveries (and more obituaries to be ordered!). Plowing through them in starts and stops occasionally causes me to forget to do the follow-up research, and I just realized when I pulled this family up for this article tonight that this was exactly the case with C.W. Moore – more research is needed. Here is a transcription of the two obituaries for him:

Obituaries of Commodore Worth Moore, Sr.

The Greenville News, 24 Dec 1923, p. 3:

“C. W. Moore Dies At Vaughnville

GREENWOOD, Dec. 23 – Special – C. W. Moore, for many years a teacher in various parts of the South, died at his home at Vaughnville, Newberry county, last night following a long illness. The funeral will be conducted at Soul’s Cemetery at 2 o’clock tomorrow afternoon.

Mr. Moore was 75 years of age, having been born in Anderson county in 1848. He was a graduate of the Lutheran College before that institution was moved from Walhalla to Newberry and was at one time connected with Auburn University.

For the past 18 or 20 years he had lived at Vaughnville, where he was engaged in farming and in the mercantile business.”


The Greenville News, 27 Dec 1923, p. 5

“Former Auburn Man Goes to His Reward

GREENWOOD, Dec. 26 – (Special.) – Funeral services for C. W. Moore, formerly connected with the Alabama Polytechnic Institute at Auburn, Ala., and a teacher in a number of Southern states for many years who died at his home at Vaughnville, Newberry county, Saturday night, were conducted from the home Monday afternoon and interment was made in Souls cemetery.

Mr. Moore is survived by his second wife, two sons, by a former marriage, and one daughter as follows: T. J. Moore, Longview, Tex.; C. W. Moore, Atlanta, Ga., and Mrs. F. M. Stephens, Charlotte, N. C.

His first wife, who died many years ago, was a daughter of Col. James T. Roberts, of Anderson.”

New items of information for me:

1. The fact that C. W. Moore had had such an illustrious career as a teacher and had graduated from Lutheran College.

2. The fact that his first wife’s maiden name was Roberts (I already knew her first name was Nora) and her father was Col. James T. Roberts of Anderson. Previously I had found the maiden name of his second wife, Martha Black, and the fact that she had had two husbands prior to her marriage to C. W. Moore (Henry Luther Crout and P. H. Koon).

2. The fact that one of his daughters (he had two daughters and two sons that I know of) had probably predeceased her father, the name of the husband of the surviving daughter, and the fact that the daughter and her husband were living in Charlotte, NC, at the time of C.W. Moore’s death. This last piece of information was the clue I need to find out which of the two daughters was married to Mr. Stephens (Dana) and which had probably died (Wynona); I was able to find a North Carolina death certificate for Dana Stephens, and it listed her parents as C. W. Moore and Nora Roberts.

3. The location of son T. J. Moore at the time of C. W. Moore’s death.

So what remains to be done to follow up on this information? Well, I forgot to do the census work for F. M. and Dana Stephens in North Carolina and for T. J. Stephens in Texas, as well as search for any other information that may pop on them in Ancestry, the Family Search pilot page, and other search pages. That should be this weekend’s chore.

Here is the family of C. W. and Nora Moore:

Commodore Worth “Commie” Moore
b. 17 Feb 1848, South Carolina
d. 22 Dec 1923, Vaughanville, Newberry Co., SC
& Nora Roberts
b. 1855
d. bef 1900
|--Dana Moore
|----b. 6 Jun 1879, Seneca, Oconee Co., South Carolina
|----d. 20 Sep 1952, Charlotte, Mecklenburg, North Carolina
|---& F. M. Stephens
|--T. J. Moore
|----b. 1881, South Carolina
|--Wynona Moore
|----b. Aug 1884, South Carolina
|----d. bef 1923
|--Commodore Worth Moore Jr.
|----b. Jun 1892, South Carolina
|----d. 23 Mar 1940, Atlanta, Georgia
|---& Marjorie Appleton
|----b. 1896, New York
|----m. 1926

Obviously many gaps remain in my information on this family: dates of death for Nora and Wynona Moore and information on Dana’s husband F. M. Stephens and on T. J. Moore, to start with. I also want to find out more about Nora Roberts’ family.

If you are reading this and believe that you are related to this family I would really like to hear from you (you can find my e-mail if you click on View my complete profile under the section at the left entitled “About Me”).