return to handbook view

MOORE, JOHN W. (ca. 1797-1846). John W. Moore, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence^qv and early Texas official, was born in Pennsylvania about 1797. He traveled to Texas from Tennessee in 1830 and settled in Harrisburg Municipality. In December 1831 the ayuntamiento^qv of San Felipe de Austin announced his election as comisario^qv of the precinct of San Jacinto. Moore was a friend of William B. Travis^qv and was with him on July 30, 1835, when a company of volunteers under Travis forced the capitulation of Antonio Tenorio^qv at the fort at Anahuac. Moore was a delegate from Harrisburg to the Consultation^qv and was elected contractor for the army by the General Council^qv on November 18, 1835. He was one of the three representatives from Harrisburg at the Convention of 1836^qv at Washington-on-the-Brazos and signed the Declaration of Independence. On October 3, 1836, Moore was seated in the House of the First Congress of the Republic of Texas^qv as a member from Harrisburg County, but his election was contested and Jesse H. Cartwright^qv was seated in his stead on October 11. In January 1837 Moore was elected captain of the Second Militia District and sheriff of Harrisburg County; he held the latter post at least until November 30, 1840. In 1839 he served as a trustee for the newly formed Harrisburg Town Company. On January 6, 1840, he was elected an alderman of the city of Houston. He was a charter member of the first Independent Order of Odd Fellows lodge of Texas, organized at Houston on July 25, 1838. Moore's first wife died sometime after April 28, 1831. On February 21, 1839, he married Eliza Belknap in Houston. He died in Houston in 1846 and was buried there in the city cemetery. In 1936 the Texas Centennial^qv Commission placed a monument in the cemetery in his honor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sam Houston Dixon, Men Who Made Texas Free (Houston: Texas Historical Publishing, 1924). Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence (Salado, Texas: Anson Jones, 1944; rpt. 1959). Andrew Forest Muir, "Railroad Enterprise in Texas, 1836-1841," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 47 (April 1944). Ralph W. Steen, "Analysis of the Work of the General Council, Provisional Government of Texas, 1835-1836," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 40-42 (April 1937, January-July 1938). Texas House of Representatives, Biographical Directory of the Texan Conventions and Congresses, 1832-1845 (Austin: Book Exchange, 1941).

L. W. Kemp

The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/MM/fmo32.html (accessed October 15, 2008).

(NOTE: "s.v." stands for sub verbo, "under the word.")

The Handbook of Texas Online is a project of the Texas State Historical Association (http://www.tshaonline.org).

Copyright ©, The Texas State Historical Association, 1997-2002
Last Updated: January 18, 2008
Please send us your comments.