Rankie Moore with wife Bertha Daniels Moore, Harlan KY. Photo uploaded to Facebook by Linda Murr-Barnes.
My 2x Great Grandfather Rankin Moore has always been shrouded in mystery. There were stories that he took his new bride’s late first husband’s name, that no one raised him, that his mother abandoned him in a hog pen because he was illegitimate. These are the stories we grew up with. But no one knew the truth, or how to find it.
When I began looking at my ancestry, I nagged my Mamau incessantly about her grandfather’s history. She told me all that she knew: He had a brother named Albert Powell who lived in Cincinnati and his mother’s name was Nancy Jane Jackson – she was blind and her family was from Pineville (in Bell County, KY). She also said that no one knew who his father was.
On May 8, 1919 in Harlan County, 25 year old Bertha Daniels Moore married my great-great grandfather. An 18 year old by a familiar name, Rank Moore, a miner and farmer. This Rank claimed on the marriage record to be the son of Nancy Jane Jackson and Rank Moore, Sr. Family lore has it that the ever stubborn Bertha refused to give up her surname, instead making her new husband take the name Moore.
For years, we assumed that Rankie made up a name on his wedding day to assume his wife’s surname. I just figured that that branch would never be filled out. But recently, while trying to find articles on the family in Kentucky I stumbled upon something fantastic from The Corbin Times Tribune on January 2, 1969…
A funeral notice for a man I’ve never heard of, Isadore Moore. The word “half brother” next to Rankin Moore sparked my interest, although I assumed that it was just another dead end. Knowing better than to turn down a lead, I looked up Isadore on the 1930 Census and found he was living in Harlan County with his mother, Ellen Moore. In 1920, he was going by his middle name Washington and lived with his widowed mother Ellen and siblings in Upper Martin’s Fork, Harlan County. In 1910, his father was still living. His name was Rankin Moore. At first, my heart sank a little when I saw that Ellen and Rankin had an 11 year old daughter, but viewing the record I saw that they had only been married 9 years.
Locating Rankin Senior on the 1900 Census in Upper Martins Fork I found that at age 36, he was a widower who could read but could not write. He married Ellen Lawson in November 1901, mere days after Rankin Jr. would have been born on October 25, 1901.
A granddaughter of Rankie’s said that she did recall her father telling her about his uncle Tom Moore, so it seems to corroborate with the funeral notice. Because I was still very shy of the idea that the bit about Rankin the half brother wasn’t a mistake I was very excited to see Mrs. Sarah Katherine Moore Walton‘s which also stated that she had a living half-brother named Rankin Moore.
So why did we not know where he came from when his half-siblings (possibly even his father) claimed him? We might never know. What I, and the rest of our family, know and have known all along is that no matter where he came from he was widely regarded as kind and gentle. He wore a suit and could often be found lingering outside the Harlan County Court House even in the summertime.
Resurrecting Memories 