Lewis Moore
Lewis Moore was born in South Carolina about 1765 to 1770. The 1840 census of Butler County, Alabama, counts him as a man between seventy and eighty, and the 1860 census gives his age as ninety. The 1850 census gives sixty, written by the same enumerator who made his daughter Winney twenty nine. Winney was born in South Carolina about 1801 and her sister Jane in Georgia about 1806, so the family was in both states in the first years of the century. A letter written in 1971, abstracting the 1803 will of William Moore of Abbeville District, South Carolina, says the testator's Lewis Moore "had two draws in Wilkes County, Ga." In the Georgia land lotteries a married man or a man with children drew twice. The will calls that Lewis a nephew. Whether he is this Lewis is not certain.
He was buying land in Butler County, Alabama, by 1831. Public land in that part of the state was sold through the federal land office at Cahaba, and the entries survive. He bought there with Jacob Grant in Township 12, Range 12, and in the entries of 1833 and 1834 his land lies beside that of Ambrose Smith. Ambrose Smith married his daughter Peggy. The Greenville tract books later put him in Township 8, Range 15, on an entry adjoining Calvin D. Williams. His daughter Winney and her husband John Williams lived in that township.
On 1 October 1850 the census taker Wm. H. Ringgold entered him at dwelling 932 as Louis Moore, 60, a farmer born in South Carolina. With him was Feraby, 60, also South Carolina born and marked as unable to read and write. Ten years earlier the 1840 census had counted a man of seventy to eighty, a woman of sixty to seventy and two young people in his house, with Isham Moore and a young family next door.
In 1858 he and his wife mortgaged property to William P. Bush for $482.16. A mortgage pledged land or goods as security for a debt, to be forfeited if it went unpaid. The deed opens "Lewis Moore, Pheraba Moore the wife of the said Lewis Moore, both of the State of Alabama and County of Butler." She was South Carolina born like him. The census takers wrote her as Feraby, 60, in 1850, and P. Moore, 75, in 1860. She is the only wife of his on record. Whether she was the mother of his children is not known. On her 1840 and 1860 ages she could have been, and Winney named a daughter Feraby Elizabeth.
At the end he lived with his daughter Jane and her husband Asa Hinson, at Precinct 8 of Butler County, near the Dead Fall post office. The census of 2 July 1860 lists A. Hinson, 66, a Georgia-born farmer with real estate worth $1,000 and personal estate of $7,240. Then come J. Hinson, 55, two children, C. Hinson, 7, and E. Y. Hinson, 6, and then Lewis Moore, 90, and P. Moore, 75.
He died in Butler County without a will before 22 August 1862. On that day his daughter Nancy Hester, the widow of Simeon Hester, asked the probate court to appoint an administrator. The appraisers valued what he left at $8,780. His inventory included notes owed to him by C. D. Williams.
The estate was settled in the middle of the war. The administrator was J. P. Routon, the county sheriff. Much of what the estate was owed came in as notes paid in Confederate money, and Confederate money was worthless after 1865. In January 1868 the estate was reported insolvent.
On 17 June 1864 Routon swore to the list of heirs. It names six daughters, all married or widowed and all living in Butler County: Jane Hinson, Peggy Smith, Mary Martin, Hester A. Hudson, Nancy Hester and Winney Williams. It names A. L. Moore of Conecuh County and Isham Hinson of Clark County. The case file adds H. S. Moore. Where Lewis Moore is buried is not known.
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Cite: Heirology, "Lewis Moore", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lewis-moore-15b243.