My Family in the Civil War, Part Eight: Edward and Susannah Moore and Plotting Land Records

This is the eighth in a series on my Civil War ancestors

Edward Windsor and Susannah Bryant Moore

I will share a few search tips today, along with the family info.

Edward and Susannah were married in Orange County, Indiana September 4, 1823 by John Moore, a Justice of the Peace. This was probably Edward's older brother, who also settled in Orange County.

Orange County, Indiana Marriage Records

I don't know their exact whereabouts before 1838. They were in Orange County up until then except for a brief visit to Illinois where other family had gone. It appears they liked Orange County better and came back.

On September 1, 1838, Edward Windsor Moore (and this is the only time I can recall him spelling out the Windsor) purchased 40 acres of land. 

Edward Moore Land Patent 1838

I found this document on Ancestry, but you can search land records free on the Bureau of Land Management's site, General Land Office Records. I typed in Moore, Edward, Indiana, and Orange County. It gave me a list of properties fitting these criteria. By clicking on the icon next to mine, I could view this exact same document at no charge.

Handwritten into the form is the property description. Happily, Indiana uses the Township and Range system.  It looks like a lot of mumbo jumbo, but if you parse it out, you can go look at this property as it appears today on Google Earth. Want to see it, or some property your ancestors owned?

First, have your property description handy. Then go to this site, Earth Point. This is another free site. Down the menu bar on the left, in the section called Township & Range, click on Search by Description. Fill in all the drop-down menu choices there, then click Fly To On Google Earth. (By the way, Google Earth is also free, and can be lots of fun to mess around with.) I'll show you what I got for Edward's land description. First, a general overview showing his 40 acres in purple. The town of French Lick is nearby to get your bearings.

Edward Moore's 40 acres  at T1N R2W Section 14

Now to zoom in a little.

Edward Moore's 40 acres zoomed in

And finally, I wanted to see where this property was in relation to Moore's Ridge Church and Cemetery. I typed "Moores Ridge Cemetery" into Google Earth and got this picture.

Edward Moore's 40 acres relative to Moore's Ridge Cemetery

The property is outlined in purple. The church is the little yellow symbol near the bottom right. You might see the church, and the cemetery stretches out to the east of it. I am related in some way to nearly every person there. Susannah's grandmother is believed to the first person buried there.

Grave of Sarah Barbara Thrush Alspaugh Crout at Moore's Ridge Cemetery

And how did I get these pictures? When you are satisfied with what you have on the screen in Google Earth, go to the File menu, down to Save, then select Save Image. It will put a little .jpg on your computer for you. Tada!

I've spent a lot of time with using the land records here, so let me briefly describe the Moore family when they got this land. Edward was nearly 36, Susannah 34. They had six children living with them on their farm, including Sarah age 14, Barbara age 10, William Bryant age 8 (my ancestor), Martha age 6, Edward age 4, and Clarissa age 1.  They had already buried their firstborn son, John. He had died in 1832 at age 6. I learned from the pension file that they pretty much lived on what the farm produced with little extra to sell, like many families at that time.

More on the family before the war next time.

My Family in the Civil War, Part Seven: Edward and Susannah Moore, Beginnings

This is the seventh in a series on my Civil War ancestors.

Edward Windsor and Susannah Bryant Moore

On my recent genealogy road trip, I was primarily researching family on my father's side. However, I had recently discovered the existence of the Civil War pension file of Susannah Moore. She applied for a mother's pension, the first I'd ever heard of. I put this one at the top of my list to secure at the National Archives.

Index to Civil War Pension Files for Bartlett C. Moore, see source 1 below

What I learned from this file, along with my other research, is a story I have to tell before I can even begin to work on my father's material.

This is the story of Edward and Susannah Bryant Moore, my great great great great grandparents. It concerns mostly the last half of their lives, but I'll outline what I know about their earlier years today.

Edward Windsor Moore was born October 17th 1802 in Guilford County, North Carolina to Edward W. and Pheriba Moore, the sixth of nine known children.  At this time, the Indiana Territory had recently been carved out of the Northwest Territory. 

Sometime before 1812 (when the father Edward appears on a militia list in Harrison County, Indiana Territory) the Moore family moved, along with several other North Carolina families, to the area that would later be called Orange County, Indiana.  They lived for some time at Moore Fort, which was a log block house surrounded by a deep ditch. Just inside the ditch was a row of posts set into the ground pointing out over the ditch.  There were still some Indians in the area, and sometimes early settlers would have to shelter at this and other forts nearby. 

Edward W. Moore, the father, received a land grant in 1816 for 80 acres. He and Pheriba lived there until they sold the property in 1833. They moved to Illinois for a time where some of their other children had gone, then on to Parke County, Indiana, where they lived out the remainder of their lives. Their story is for another day though.

Edward Windsor Moore married Susannah Bryant on September 24th, 1823. He was almost 21, and she was 19. She was born July 25th, 1804, the daughter of William Bryant and Barbara Alspaugh. The Bryants came to Orange County from Lincoln County, Kentucky. 

Like any diligent genealogist, I'd found all the census records for the Moores. I recorded the names and birthdates for all their 13 children from a family Bible transcript. I knew Edward was a Methodist minister in Orleans, Indiana. I also knew that he and Susannah had lost some sons in the Civil War. I thought I had a pretty good picture of them in my mind's eye. A nice old preacher and his wife, probably fairly well off living out their days in town in Orleans after farming in their early years.

What I found in the pension file painted a far different picture.

Next post I will discuss Edward and Susanna's life before the Civil War.

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Sources:
1. National Archives and Records Administration. U.S., Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000. Original data: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. T288, 546 rolls.
2. "History of Lawrence, Orange and Washington Counties Indiana"