52 Ancestors: #9 David Moore ~ Closer to Home

David Moore was born on 07 April 1903 [1]  in Wattsville, a little unincorporated town in Fox Township in Carroll County, Ohio to William Grant Moore and Nancy Jane Hale. He was the sixth of seven children born to William and Nancy. Dave had four sisters; Lula, Effa, Sadie, and Nettie and two brothers; William and John. All four of the girls were born before any of the boys.

In 1910, the family was living in Salineville [2] in Washington Township in Columbiana County, Ohio with the four youngest children, along with married daughter Sadie and her husband, Homer Beadnell. We also find the family still living in Salineville by the time of the 1920 census [3] where William and Nancy are enumerated along with their 3 sons William, David, and John. The boys had Moore cousins who lived in Bergholz and David, especially, spent a lot of time visiting them. This is how he met my grandmother, Elsie Marcella Hackathorn. The cousins lived nearby the Hackathorns. David and Elsie were married on 12 April 1923 in Wellsburg, Brooke County, West Virginia. It appears that the certificate has been lost somehow because even my grandmother had a hard time trying to obtain a copy when she retired from the S.S. Kresge Company. [4]

David and Elsie were living in Springfield Township, Jefferson County, Ohio (near Bergholz) by the time of the 1930 census [5] with their first 3 children of nine, two daughters and a son. David was working in the coal mines at that time. At some point, they lived for a stint in Canton, Stark County, Ohio as it was noted on the 1940 census as the place they were living in 1935 [6]. In between the censuses, another daughter and two sons were born to them. The next move was to Hanover Township in Columbiana County, near Bayard, where my mother was born and started to school. [7] Two more sons were born to David and Elsie after my mother was born in 1942. David continued his work in the coal mines and worked for a time for a window washing company. Along about the time that my mother would be entering the sixth grade, David got a job with the City of Canton that necessitated a move back up to Canton to live, where they rented several houses before buying the house that I knew.

David Moore was, of course, my maternal grandfather. Others might have quite different memories of him, but I have only the fondest of memories of him from when I was a small, somewhat precocious, child. For a time after I was born, my mom and dad and I lived at the house with Grandma and Grandpa. My dad’s mother lived right across the alley.

One of my uncles (or perhaps two of them, more about those uncles at another time) owned a riding academy by the name of Town and Country out on Perry Drive in Canton and it was there that the family spent a lot of time, including my grandfather. David had come from “horse people” and his father William, had always owned fine horses. My grandmother always said that he had the finest horses around and when there was a need for horses to pull the hearse at funerals and to the cemetery, that William was always called on to come with his horses.

 My mom tells me that they kept my bassinet in the barn office with a curtain draped over it to keep off the flies. My grandfather bought me a grey Shetland pony before I was even close to being able to ride – but my mom says that he used to sit me on top of it all the time and hold me there. The pony’s name was Smokey, but not being able to say my S’s, he was Mokey to me.

As a young child, I spent a lot of time at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I asked my mom a couple of days ago if it was really all that much time or if it was a false memory, but she assured me that I was there quite often because my grandpa wanted me there. My grandma and grandpa’s bedroom was in a room right off the kitchen and I loved being in there. There were bridles and reins hanging from the walls, and a framed picture of a horse, and a calendar that had a photo of Dale Evans on it (I decided that I didn’t care for Dale Evans after I found out that she was married to Roy Rogers – I kind of had it in my head that I was going to grow up to marry Roy Rogers). My grandpa had bought me a stuffed penguin that was probably about 11” high and he used to put his fingers under the wings so that the wings would flap (although I didn’t know he was doing that at the time). Whenever I’d come to stay for a few days, he’d take me down to Lawson’s and get two cardboard boxes, one a little smaller than the other, and placed on their sides they would become my dresser into which he’d place a round mirror in the top one and a Big Ben alarm clock and my penguin into the bottom one. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with Grandpa sitting on his lap, or on the table, or walking around entertaining him with my Groucho Marx imitations. These are some of the fond memories that I have of him.

He loved baseball and the Cleveland Indians, in particular. The television was placed in the living room so that he could watch from the kitchen. He loved Polka music and was crazy about a young honky tonk piano player on Lawrence Welk by the name of JoAnn Castle [8]. He’d say, “Listen to that babe pound that piana!” Somehow he convinced me that if I didn’t put my tongue in the hole of my gums where I’d lost a tooth, that my tooth would grow in gold like his. Of course, that is impossible and I was disappointed to not be able to grow any gold teeth. Yes, my grandfather was a character and he also loved his whiskey.

At some point before I started second grade, my grandfather and grandmother split up. She went to live with a Wyckoff cousin and he went to live with his sister. Our family moved into Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I lost touch with my grandpa until I was in high school, at which time I walked past his little house, catty-cornered across the street from his sister’s house, and I would stop and chat with him a little while if I saw him sitting outside. After graduation, I lost touch with him again. I was out of state for a while, was working, got married and had my children… He passed away 13 November 1988.

This is my Week #8 post for Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors 52 Weeks Challenge.

The optional theme for this week was “Close to Home”.

SOURCES:

[1] Savage, Arnold Hegy. Guide to Carroll County, Ohio Birth Records, 1867-1908. Carrollton, OH: Carroll County Genealogical Society, 2000. 350. Print.
[2] Database online. Year: 1910; Census Place: Salineville, Columbiana, Ohio; Roll: T624_1162; Page: 14A; Enumeration District: 0058; Image: 364; FHL microfilm: 1375175.
[3] Database online. Year: 1920; Census Place: Salineville, Columbiana, Ohio; Roll: T625_1356; Page: 16B; Enumeration District: 145; Image: 604.
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._S._Kresge
[5] Database online. Year: 1930; Census Place: Springfield, Jefferson, Ohio; Roll: 1824; Page: 4A; Enumeration District: 27; Image: 844.0.
[6] Database online. Year: 1940; Census Place: Hanover, Columbiana, Ohio; Roll: T627_3043; Page: 16B; Enumeration District: 15-15.
[7]http://www.oldohioschools.com/columbiana_county_files/Columbiana%20Bayard%20School%20(Medium).jpg
[8] http://www.welkgirls.com/joanncastle.html