Happy Birthday, Nannie!

Today would be the 105th birthday of my paternal grandmother, Christeen Taylor Moore (1906-1993), forever known to me as "Nannie."

The Wingfields of Rutland and Tickencote

Part of my great-great grandmother Sarah Margaret Huckeba Moore's line goes back to the Wingfields, who at one time owned much of the land in Rutland emcompassing and surrounding the village of Tickencote. Below is a video of a walking tour of the Rutland Round, including views of the church in Tickencote with a stone commemorating its rebuilding in 1792 by Eliza Wingfield, a distant relation.

Sarah Margaret Huckeba

Photo of my great-great grandmother Sarah Margaret Huckeba, first wife of Rev. Thomas Moore and mother of my great-grandfather Marion Joshua Moore. At this writing I am researching her bloodline, which thus far extends to the Garlands, Wingfields, Cromwells, and Seymours. More will be posted at a later date.

Update: Her memorial page at Find A Grave, including an obituary from the Carroll County Times, may be found here.

Pellagra and the Death of Zach Kinney

A recent find, the death certificate of my great-great-grandfather Jim Kinney's brother, Zachary Taylor Kinney. cause of death was pellagra, an all too common malady in the southeast US and parts of Europe prior to World War II. It was especially common among older people who had lost their teeth at a time when dental care and dentures were not widely available, forcing them to subsist almost entirely on corn mush. Corn is rich in niacin but in a form which is not easily absorbed in its natural state. Native Americans had long ago learned the trick of washing maize in wood ash lye to release the niacin, but curiously European settlers never bothered to learn it from them.

James A. Kinney Family Photo

Here is a picture I recently found on Find A Grave of my great-great grandfather, James Arnold Kinney (17 Feb, 1851 - 16 April, 1935), with his wife and family. It was posted by Judy K. Brantley Wilson and is re-posted here with her permission. From left to right are Claude Kinney, Dumah Kinney, Dumah's wife Mattie Stallings and their daughter Erma Belle, my great-grandmother Ada Eugenia, Annie Kinney, my great-great grandmother Alice Evans Kinney, and James Arnold Kinney. This was taken at their home outside Temple, Georgia.

And here, from my brother's collection, is Jim Kinney plowing his field.

Jim Kinney is interred at Asbury Cemetery in Temple.

Colorful Relations, Chapter One

My cousin J. Craig Canada provided me with a story from the San Francisco Morning Call, dated 2 November, 1893, about our mutual relation, Colonel J.Hampton Hoge , who was to have been Grover Cleveland's ambassador to the Imperial Court of China, - that is, before drink loosened his tongue en route to San Francisco so that he made some frank but unflattering comments about the President and his economic policies to a reporter. He had also apparently assaulted a Southern Pacific Railway employee. Like Craig, I'm wondering if the phrase "nursing a small kitten" is a euphemism for the saloon he was in actually being a cat house.

I also found an obituary for Colonel Hoge in the New York Times, dated 14 Feb, 1903. He had apparently switched parties, but found even less success as a Republican. A biographical page on Colonel Hoge can be found on Craig's site.

Green N. Moore and Family

As a follow-up to the previous post about my great-grandfather, Marion Joshua Moore, here's a picture of his brother, Green N. Moore (March 1868 - 28 Dec., 1955) and his wife Minnie W. Kinney Moore (born 1870), with their daughters Lemma (born 1888) and Sarah Vera (1893 - 1910). They also had two sons,  Marion Moore, born 1906, the same year as my grandfather, and Andrew Jackson "Jack" Moore, born in 1908. Minnie was the daughter of Marion Lafayette Kinney, James A. Kinney's brother, and thus was cousin to my great-grandmother, Ada Eugenia Kinney. She and Green were married on 13 January, 1887. As mentioned in the previous post, Uncle Green and Aunt Minnie took in my grandfather and his sisters and raised them after their parents had died in the years 1912 and 1914.