The Mystery of George Moore
The Mystery of George Moore the Candy Man
A unique feature of North Hampton’s observation of Memorial Day is the existence of the George W. Moore Fund, the proceeds from which are used annually to buy candy for the town’s children….
George Moore, who established the fund in his will, was a Black. He had come to North Hampton as a young boy in the 1880s. and probably had been born of slave parents. The Christopher Moore family took him in to live with them and allowed him to assume their family name. As a young man he had worked in the grocery store of John W. Hobbs, and, observing how much the children who came to the store enjoyed candy, he was motivated to establish the fund with his bequest of $868 in 1939. Strangely, Moore left town in 1890, lived in California and many other places and did not return to visit North Hampton until 1923. After his visit he went away again, never to return to North Hampton. Stillman Moulton Hobbs and Helen Davis Hobbs, The Way it was in North Hampton, 1978.
Last year the Historical Society had planned to do a small exhibit in the Library’s display case about George Moore in time for Memorial Day. We have a photograph of Moore, and of the Hobbs store, a box from that store which Moore gave John Hobbs son, Hervey Hobbs, and a copy of a lawyer’s letter informing the Town of Moore’s bequest for $1000, not $868. The pandemic and not leaving well enough alone stymied the exhibit and has changed what we might have said.
Using FamilySearch and typing in George W. Moore and North Hampton, I found him in the 1880 census. There’s 57 year old Christopher T. Moore, 27 year old George W. Moore, a farm laborer, and 54 year old Elmary Shan, a widow listed as housekeeper. Christopher is described as “divorced”. Obviously, Moore was no child in the 1880s.
Going back to the 1860 and 1870 censuses to see if perhaps George showed up in North Hampton earlier than 1880 when he was a child, I learned there was a Mrs. Moore, Sarah, and a son, Frederick J., in the Christopher Moore household but no George. In other words, the oft-told story seems to unravel.
We also know from that 1880 census that George W. Moore was born in California. After leaving North Hampton, it certainly makes sense he may have visited California if that was his home state.
Moore families also show up in the 1880 census in California, including Wade Moore, a farmer in Mendocino County, who was born in Missouri. and a wife, Ruth Ann, who was born in Tennessee. Both of those states were slave states so it is possible the two had been enslaved. Wade and Ruth Ann Moore have a son George, the same age as our George, as well as three daughters and a niece and nephew.
Could George have been double-counted? June 1st was census day in 1880. In North Hampton the census was taken between June 1 and June 11, and the Christopher Moore household on June 2. In Calpella, Mendocino County, California, census taking occurred from June 1 to 25. Wade and Ruth Ann Moore, George, three daughters and a niece and nephew -- the Moore family -- were counted on June 17. (Count was based on who lived there June 1.) Where in the world was George at the time? How good were the census-takers and to whom in each family did they speak?
Also in both 1880 census reports, the one in North Hampton and one in Calpella, George Moore and the rest of both households are listed as White in the Race category. We know from Moore’s photograph that he was light complexioned; certainly a census-taker or the family might have self-described themselves as white.
Two asides.
1) In the first twenty five pages of the Calpella census, all are White and either they themselves or their parents came from other states. For the last three pages of the census, all are Indians, no last names given, who are native Californians; and, while white children had received schooling, there’s no indication Indian children did.
2) The photo of Moore, a cabinet card, provides the photographer’s name, sometimes a lead in dating a photograph. Forget that image in your mind’s eye of a nineteenth century photographer. A.M. Gendron is Addie M. Gendron, born in Canada, and working as a photographer in Syracuse NY when she was fifteen. She moved to Rhode Island and had her own studio according to a Rhode Island 1875 census. She was in Boston between 1888 and 1895 so we do have an approximate date for Moore’s photograph. Does he look as if he were in his late thirties, early forties then? Was he living in Boston after leaving North Hampton? Doing what?
So what we know about Moore is different from what we thought we knew BUT we still know almost nothing about his life. His $1000 bequest made generations of North Hampton children happy -- a tradition that continues today with the Fire Department providing candy on Memorial Day. It also was a good newspaper story beginning with the Portsmouth Herald in 1938 and continuing around Memorial Day for some years. It’s still a good story but with a lot of loose ends.