Elias Valentine Moore, oldest son of James Harrison and Elizabeth (Duncan) Moore, was born June 13, 1862 near Burnside, Illinois. His grandfather, Joseph Moore was born in Ireland and came to America about 1826. After landing in New York he worked as a mill-wright and carpenter in the construction of the Erie Canal. He was married in Pennsylvania and moved to Ohio where the oldest son James Harrison was born January 22, 1831. The family moved westward and settled in Hancock County, Illinois. In 1869 Elias's parents moved to Nodaway County, Missouri settling near the town of Quitman. In 1870 they moved to a farm on the Missouri River, near Peru, Nebraska. In the late summer and fall of 1871, Elias at the age of nine years accompanied a cattle outfit to the Canadian River in west Texas and returned with seven hundred head of heifers. The roundtrip took several weeks and while camped near Dodge City, Kansas, they rode into town to see a man buried in the famous Boot Hill cemetery. Young Elias (Lide) missed most of the fall school term but he had nearly three months schooling while living in Missouri and thought that was all the book learning that he would ever need. Early in the spring of 1872 the family moved to Kansas settling in the Se quarter of Section 32 in Lincoln Township, Republic county. About 1874 they bought a tract of land west of Concordia, later the townsite of Yuma was located upon this farm. The Moores lived in a dugout where Buffalo Creek makes its first bend west of the present concrete bridge. In 1878 they sold this farm and moved north to the south side of the large hill known as Murray's Hill, later known as The Devil's Backbone. Here they built a dugout and a large corral and run a herd of cattle on range land that they leased from the State. During the summer of 1879 Lide made another trip to Texas, this time with a man named McClelland who returned with a string of horses. In about three years time most of the state land was taken by homesteaders and the Moores were on the move again. This time to Fort McKinney, Wyoming. They left Kansas in 1880 with three covered wagons, ten head of mules and several head of saddle horses and trading stock. They took a contract to haul cord wood to the fort, but two years later the Fort was inactivated and all of the family excepting Lide returned to Kansas. At this time he was driving stage between Casper and Sheridan and had decided to stay in Wyoming. He had located a tract of land on Little Goose Creek near Sheridan which he wished to homestead and planned to stay in Wyoming until he was of legal age to file his claim. But, with his family gone he soon started to drift back to Kansas, working on several ranches in Wyoming and Nebraska. He worked for Bill Cody at North Platte and for an outfit at Kearney that was delivering imported draft stallions to farmers and ranchers in central Nebraska. He joined his family at Mankato, Kansas. In 1884 he made his last trip to Texas, this time with the Seerite outfit trailing a string of horses to a ranch near Tipton, Kansas.
Alfarata, daughter of Dr. Winfield and Christena Gazell (Smith) Scott was born October 10, 1868 at Wesfield, Indiana. In the fall of 1870 the family moved to Blue Rapids, Kansas and on April 1, 1871 they moved into their dugout home one and one half miles west and about one half mile south of Norway, Kansas. The dugout was walled up with limestone on the front side, had a dirt floor and was covered with cottonwood boards and buffalo grass sod. Alfarata attended two three-months terms of school in a dugout about a mile west of their home and one term at the Sunny Side school in Cloud County. She liked horses and the great out-of-doors. When she was twelve years old, she took a job of helping one of their neighbors heard 600 head of Texas cattle. She got fifty cents a day and furnished her own cow pony. The neighbor had a daughter about Alfa's age and the three of them cared for the cattle. In the summer, when the grass was short they had to drive the herd several miles to water. One day near the Little Salt Marsh they were caught in a severe hail storm. Alfa said that her head and back was bruised and sore for several days as a result of being pounded with the hail stones. Assisting her father in practice, she learned practical nursing and for many years served the community in that capacity. On September 16, 1885 she was married to Elias V. Moore. After living a short time in Smith County, Kansas they returned to Norway Township and filed a homestead claim on a tract of land in Section 20 along the west bank of the Republican River.
In the fall of 1890 they moved to Indian Territory where Lide worked for a Texas cattle outfit, hauled logs for a logging company and on various occasions he served as a deputy U. S. marshall. He contacted malaria and late in the year of 1891 they came back to Kansas. One of their wagons was pulled by a yoke of long horned oxen, probably the last yoke of oxen ever to be driven into Republic County. On March 9, 1892 they moved to the farm that was their home the rest of their lives. Mr. Moore member of the Norway Wednesday Club and attended the Club's 49th anniversary in 1957. Probably as the result of many years of work with livestock and a dedicated love for horses, E. V. Moore entered the profession of Veterinary Surgeon. He practiced with Dr. McCassey of Concordia and was issued a non-graduate license by the State of Kansas. Elias and Alfa Moore reared two sons, James Andrew Moore, born September 24, 1886, and now living in Modesto, California and LaRoy Michael Moore, born February 9, 1907 and residing on the farm formerly the home of his parents.
Elias Moore died February 19, 1939 and Alfa Moore on December 14, 1959.
Roy M. Moore
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