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DOCUMENT No. 10

Gideon E. Moore to Dr. John Pepper
sent from: Waxahachie, TX to Danbury, NC
dated: January 14m 1861
letter (privately held) - original owned by Ellen Pepper Tilley of Danbury, NC

G[ideon] E. Moore is the son of Reuben (c1766-1839), probably by his second wife Susannah Martin. This Moore family of Stokes was a large and wealthy family founded by Matthew (1738-1801) and his wife Letitia Dalton. As this letter indicates the family was well educated. Gideon mentions in other letters, family in Texas which were probably the descendants of his uncle, Gideon Moore (1785-1844) who served as Governor of Alabama, but settled in Caddo, TX. Though not related directly to the Davis and Fulton families, he was well acquainted with them and in this lettter writes in detail about their situation in the early years of their emigration.

Waxahachie1 Texas Janry 14th 61
Dr Jno Pepper (2)
Dear Sir

I wrote you a long letter / shortly after the reception of one from you / and not having heard from you since / I have conceeded to drop you a line, to / say to you if you have not written / first told or until you hear from me / again. As I expect to leave here in a / few days. I may land in Old / Stokes or I may stop somewhere on / the route between here & there. One / thing is reduced to a certainty I shall / leave texas. I am not displeased with / the country. neither am I displeased / with the people, so far as my intercourse / personally, is concerned with them, but / they are unstable, resless impulsive and / altogether too apt to act from the / impulse of the moment with but / little reason. no refelection, and a / small portion of common sense. / I am tired out with them and am / determined to leave them (3)

I leave some who are strongly attached / to me, who are really my friends, who / would stand by, or fight for me if / necessary. And still they are not the / right sort of beings. they are not / such men as have my confidence, / they are not true and disinterested Secess / =ionists. And disorganists - nothing like a / true love of country can be found in their composition. I am disgusted with them.(4) Jas.W. Davis (5) has / settled on a most excellent peice / of land, just as rich as land ever / gets to be. And should Texas ever become calm & quiet he will do well / Fultin's (6) lands are not as rich altogether / but sufficiently so. much richer than / any Town fork or Dan River bottoms (7) / He has an excellent Spring & more / timber than James, and is breaking / up fencing in the prairies like a / true farmer. He will certainly / make a fortune without bad luck / or misfortune of some sort (8). Mrs. / Fultin (9) & all well. And if she had / her old friends around her She would / be quite contented. particularly if She /

could only see her father Old Jimy (10), stepping / around occationally. Jas. W. Davis and / wife (11) are very well satisfied and well / I am shure, do well should the people / of Texas ever become calm & quiet, as they / should. The legislature will meet on / the 24th Inst. And the convention on / the 28th They will certainly pap an / Ordinance declaring Texas absolved from / all allegience to the General Governor of the / U. States and follow in the wake of S. Carolona / they are determined on this course, and / nothing will stay them. So you may see / Texas down an out of the union. I fear / this thing "of cutting off ones nose to spight / the face" will turn out badly and will / be regretted for ages to come, but if / it must be so, let it come. I would / rather see it than to be always in dread / of it. Ed Moore (12) & Company have / just got in form a tour of six or seven / weeks on the frontier. they gathered no trophies, and did not get in sight of / An indian except, one dead one. / They expect to return next Monday / week, And C[illegible] to stay until / they get a fight. they Killed a few / Buffalow and as many deer &c as they /

needed. I did not intend this letter / to be longer than my finger. I only / dessired to tell you not to write until / you heard form me. but I shall now gone on so long as my paper / holds out. Ed tells me that he / saw a great many singular forma / =tions of the mineral Kingdom / such as he never have before, and / that he though of Dr. Pepper all the / time (13), but could not pack them. / Had he collected a fwe Specimens / I would have taken a pleasure in / conveying them to you provided I / go to Old N.C. And should I stop / on the way would have sent them / I should like amazingly well to see / my old friends of Carolina, but / really I do not think half as much of / the old State as I should have done / had she voted for Bell & Everett (14) / But I suppose I must forgive her, but / can never forget her. Give my / best respects to all. And accept / of my best wishes for your health / & happiness

I am / Yours Truly G.E. Moore

Notes:

1. Waxahachie Waxahachie is the seat of Ellis County, Texas. Wilson Fulton's land was located in the Southwestern part of the county near a place called Crystle Springs.

2. Dr Jno Pepper (1795-1881) The son of William & Jane (Rayburn) Pepper. Dr. Pepper was originally from Montgomery County, Virginia. It is known that he recieved some medical training from Transylvania University in Lexington, KY. He married first in Virginia to Nancy Masten and secondly to Mary Moody in 1825 the daughter of Alexander and Sarah (Follis) Moody of Stokes. The Peppers orignally lived in Germanton until 1837 when he became involved in iron production and bought the Frost home and ironworks on Neatman Creek north of Germanton. In 1853 he moved to Danbury when it was chosen as the new county seat.

3. ..I am tired out with them and am determined to leave them.. Moore is clearly disgusted with the political attitudes of the Texans who quickly sided with the Secessionists and advocated a break with the Union. This comment clearly reflects Moore's conservative views, which opposed and decicive action to either the inistitutuion of slavery or to Northern agression. Moore's attraction to John Bell's political platform, was probably due to the tactfullness of Bell's approach to the slavery issue and lack of commitment to any real change. Bell's following also included the Know-nothings, a militantly "patriotic" organization formerly the secret Society of the Star-Spangled Banner, whose political roots sprang from the anti-Catholic movements of the 1850s. From these movements the KKK would later find their inspiration.

4. ..I am disgusted with them.. It is unclear how this relates to the Davis and Fulton families in Ellis who he was intimate with. This paragraph is followed by his discription of James W. Davis and Wilson Fulton; however, it is unclear if his comments includes these two men. After the War, Wilson was one of the first in Ellis county to take the oath of loyality.

5. Jas. W. Davis James W. Davis (1832-1906) Eighth child of James & Elizabeth (McAnally) Davis, Stokes County planters.. Despite James' rich Texas lands, he did not stay in Texas and returned to North Carolina at the end of the Civil War, for reasons unknown. His trip back to North Carolina resulted in a tragedy which is discribed in a later letter.

6. Fultin's

   Wilson Fulton (1819-1875) Second child of Samuel & Nancy (Redman) Fulton, planter in Stokes County, NC. He married Mary Ann Davis in 1840 and was an active farmer, merchant, and owned a tanyard in Danbury. He built the first brick house in Danbury which still stands. In 1861, Wilson moved his family from Stokes to Ellis County where he had purchased 570 acres. A tract of 220 acres are listed under his own name and the remainder under Fulton & Company. Family oral history remembers Fulton running a cargo line between Central Texas and New Orlenes. By 1870, Wilson moves to Coryell County, Texas where he had purchased 350 acres. He died suddenly in 1875 of a heart attack while visiting some of his children in Lampasas, TX.

7. ..Townfork or Dan River bottoms.. The richest land in Stokes County is found along Town Fork Creek and the Dan River. This rich bottom land was the most productive in a relatively mountainous area. Townfork is the site of the earliest English settlement in Stokes, while the Dan River area was settled later, in part by the McAnally and Davis families. G.E. Moore's statement here indicates that furtile soil was a major incentive to Westward emigration of Stokes County people. Both Fulton and Davis had many political and social advantages in Stokes and yet risked those privledges to move West.

8. ..misfortune of some sort.. Wilson did have misfortune in the form of the Civil War. Tax records in Ellis County show that Fulton sold half of his land after the War and soon after moved to Coryell County, Texas. It is unclear if in the move to Texas Fulton lost more than if he had stayed in North Carolina. What little is known of his wealth holdings it seems that he did better than his conterparts in the Old North State, but never really regained the prosperity he had experienced in the 1850s and early 1860s.

9. Mrs. Fultin Mary Ann "Polly" Davis Fulton (1819-1913) She is the second child of James & Elizabeth (McAnally) Davis of Stokes County, NC. She is remembered as a highly educated woman who was fond of reading. There is no idication that she ever returned to Stokes County, though she lived to an advanced age and in relatively good health.

10. Old Jimy
    A reference to, James Davis (1793-1873) James is the son of Stokes County planter James & Margaret (Dunlap) Davis. He was a wealthy planter and slaveholder, whose plantation was located at Red Shoals. James married Elizabeth McAnally, granddaughter of one of the county's founders.

11. ..and wife.. Ednie Jane Smith Davis (1834-1866) The first wife of James W. Davis. She was born in Rockingham County. She had four children by James: Alice, James, Walter, and William. It is said that her brother Walter was Sheriff of Rockingham.

12. Ed Moore unidentified. Possibly Edward H. Moore son of Matthew Redd & Mariah (McKenzy) Moore.

13. ..he though of Dr. Pepper all the time.. Dr Pepper was a local physican, known for his interests in many sciences. He was especially interested in minerals and collected specimens from around the area of Stokes. People would often bring him curiosities. His home and garden in Danbury, contained specimens of plants and rocks from across the world. Dr. Pepper's son Rufus who would later lead Stokes troops in the Civil War was in Texas around the same time as Gideon E. Moore.

14. Bell & Everett A reference to the 1860 Presidential candidate John Bell (1797-1869) a conservative Whig of Tennessee and his Vice-Presidential candidate, Edward Everett (1794-1865) of Massachusetts.
    Bell is the son of a pioneer Tennessee family. He took for his second wife a wealthy widow, Jane Erwin Yeatman. He was a slaveholder and believed in maintaining the Union at all costs, though did not support the abolition of slavery. He served as a Senator for Tennessee and briefly as the Secretary of War in President Harrison's cabinet. Bell angered Southern Democrats in his support for the compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, both atempts to find a compromise to the slavery issue. Bell ran under the Constitutional Union party made up of the remnants of the Know-nothing and Whig parties. The Constitutional Union party was committed "to organize no political principle other than the Constitution of the country, the union of the states, and the enforcement of the law." They avoided the issue of slavery and appealed to those border states which would be most vulnerable in a Civil War. Bell captured only 39 of the electoral votes and 593,000 (12.6%) of the popular votes mainly in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia Bell fled Tennessee when the Union invaded. After the War, "family tradition tells of an old man heartbroken, who paced the floor lamenting the War...".
    

    Edward Everett is the son of a Dorchester, Massachusetts minister. He attended Harvard and chaired the Greek literature department there. He became one of the greatest and best known orators in the United States. He entered politics, with his election into Congress in 1824 and "...represented the dominate conservatism of his state, showing great deference to Southern feelings on the slavery question...". He found favor among the Whigs and the Anti-Freemasonry factions. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1852. He accepted the Constitutional Union party's nomination reluctantly. With the advent of the War he quickly sided with the North and gave the North his full support. One of his best known speeches was given at the dedication of the battleground cemetery at Gettysberg, his two hour speech was overshadowed by the far more famous Gettysberg Address, delivered by Lincoln in two minutes.
    [re: Dictionary of American Biography, Vol I & III]