Ephraim Moore

https://lumbeeindiansandgoinsfamily.blogspot.com/2011/06/moore-fami... from http://www.other-free.com/blogspot/?page_id=31 [BROKEN LINK] accessed 2 Dec 2023
There is another group of Moores in the Goinstown area that are part of the Moore family. Ephraim Moore and his two sons, Jeremiah and Shadrach, are listed on the 1813 and 1814 Henry County Tax Lists for “Free Negroes and Mulattos”. A Christopher Moore and Hosa Moore are on the 1814 list but I do not know who they are and they disappear from the record. About 1815 Ephraim and his family moved to Cumberland County, Kentucky. On July 18, 1816, Shadrach Moore married Priscilla Bunch in Cumberland County. The Bunch families had been living in Cumberland County for several years prior to the Moores moving there. Priscilla was the daughter of either Julius or Israel Bunch and a granddaughter of Micajah Bunch.
We must stop here and ask a couple of questions. Was it just an historical accident that Shadrach Moore met and married Priscilla Bunch in Cumberland County? Was it just a coincidence? Why did Ephraim and his family move to Cumberland County? None of the other mulatto families moved with him. Did Ephraim move to Cumberland County because the Bunch family had settled there? Was Ephraim’s wife a Bunch who wanted to see her family? We don’t know the answers to those questions but it is reasonable to assume that the Moores knew the Bunch family from Goinstown and the Flatt River. If the two families knew each other then a marriage between a descendant of Micajah Bunch and a descendant of Ephraim Moore makes perfect sense.
Ephraim died between 1820 and 1830 and during that time Shadrach Moore, Julius Bunch, Israel Bunch, Clayborn Bunch and James Bunch moved to Greene County, Indiana. They were all listed as ”Free Colored Persons” on the 1830 Federal Census.
Some of Ephraim Moore’s descendants moved south to Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. Two of those descendants have completed DNA testing which shows a close match to the descendants of John Moore, Sr. I am a descendant of both John Moore, Jr., and his brother Andrew Moore, due to close family member intermarriage. The DNA test results show that my line and Ephraim Moore’s line are closely related.
About the same time that Charles Moore and Thomas Gibson moved to the Goinstown area other mulatto families began arriving: Jesse Goins (probably the first Goins to settle in what would become known as Goinstown, moved from the St. James District of Orange County), Randolph Riddle, Micajah Bunch, Joel Gibson, Hezekiah Minor, Benjamin and Malachi Branham and others. Some families stayed and others stayed briefly then moved on.
Charles Moore and his sons, John, James and Andrew, lived in the Goinstown area of Rockingham and Surry Counties, North Carolina. Ephraim Moore, who may be a brother or son of Charles, lived just across the state line in the Goinstown area of Henry County, Virginia. Charles moved to that area about 1777 and he died there between 1830 and 1833. All of Charles’ descendants moved west by 1833 except for William and William’s son, Isaac, and some Moore women who married Gibson and Going men. William Moore married Margaret Peggy Gibson and Stephen Gibson, son of Champ Gibson, married Elizabeth Moore. All were listed as mulatto on the 1850 census. Also in Goinstown, Sally Moor married William Goin in 1851, Adeline Moor married a William Goin in 1852 and Julian Moor married John Going in 1858.