My great-great grandmother, Bertha Daniels was a true mountain woman. Born and raised in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, she had all the traits that would help one survive that role. By all accounts, she was stubborn, independent, and hardworking. She never hesitated before drawing a gun to shoot a rattlesnake, killed and prepared her own chickens, and made most of her clothing out of potato sacks. In about 1913, Bertha was married at or around eighteen in Harlan County, Kentucky to Rankin Edward Moore (b.1895) who was the son of Shade Moore and Sarah Hettie Lee Moore. In 1914, Bertha and Rankin Edward had a daughter they named after his mother, Sarah Hettie. By 1917, the couple had moved with their daughter from Harlan, Kentucky to Hancock County, Tennessee to farm just as Rankin Edward’s older brother David Moore had.
There, they became parents a second time over to another daughter, Mary E. Moore. In Hancock County, in 1918, Rankin Edward registered for the United States First Word War Draft. On September 3rd of that year, amidst the first world war and the Spanish Influenza epidemic the young couple became parents once more, another little girl they named Eavey Cathrine was born. Rankin Edward contracted the horrible flu in October and passed away on the 26th. Little Eavey followed her father, passing away on November 13, 1918. She was laid to rest near her father in the Rosenbalm Cemetery (Formerly the Red Hill Cemetery) in Hancock County. Bertha, a newly widowed mother of two little girls, moved back home to Harlan.
Below: The death certificate of Rank(in) Edward Moore.
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. Although his surname as well as his father’s surname are listed as Moore on the marriage record, I have not been able to verify the information as records were easily manipulated and not easily verified at that time.
What ever the case, the second Rankie’s life before marrying Bertha is a mystery. We know that he had a brother named Albert Powell who was about a year older and had the same mother but a different father. I haven’t been successful in finding either of them as boys in the census records, they appear only after having married. I believe I have located Nancy Jane Jackson in 1920 and 1930 in Bell County, Kentucky first as a boarder and then as an inmate at the Bell County Poor House. I’ve been unable to find Nancy, Albert, or Rankie on the 1900 & 1910 census’.
Above: Rankie (no.2) and Bertha
Resurrecting Memories 