Robert Moore and the Farquhar Cemetery

Robert Moore’s history in Texas dates back at least to 1836 when he was with Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto. He apparently became a friend of Houston, as the family history claims Houston spent weeks at a time with the Moore family at Washington on the Brazos.  Moore was granted a league of land in Bell County for his San Jacinto service.

It is reasonable to assume that Moore, Hendleys, Wells and Farquhars were early acquaintances in North Carolina and followed each other into Mississippi and on to Texas.

Moore’s known business in Washington-on-the-Brazos was in freighting cotton to Houston by ox wagons. Each trip could take weeks of his hard earned time. When steamers started to make their way up river in the early 1840s, the little steamer named Mustang was the first, or one of the first, to make it as far as Washington-on-the-Brazos.

The book, Sandbars and Sternwheelers, co- written on the History of Steam Navigation on the Brazos by Navasota’s Pam Puryear along with Nath Winfield, Jr., wrote that: “in the spring of that year 1843, controlling interest in the Mustang was purchased by Robert Moore, a Washington business man.  He paid $2,160 for a thirty-six seventeenths interest in the Mustang in an agreement dated April 1, 1843, carefully stipulating that he should have the exclusive use of the first bar and be entitled to remain aboard at his pleasure, free of cost.” (Deed records of Washington County.)

The authors continued: “The year 1843 was a busy one for the Mustang.” However, “the Mustang’s career on the Brazos ended in that fall of 1843. While moored at Captain Oliver Jones’s landing above San Felipe, her captain was persuaded to load 8 bales of cotton in addition to the 230 she was carrying, causing uncaulked seams just below the guards to open under the increased pressure. Her hold promptly filled with muddy Brazos water and, to the mortification of captain and crew, the Mustang gurgled gently down to rest upon the sandy bottom, leaving only a portion of her upper works still visible.” (Houston Telegraph and Texas Register, Oct. 18, 1843; Nov. 15, 1843.)

The editor of Washington’s (on-the-Brazos) National Vindicator pointed out that “the worst aspect of the ‘sinking,’ aside from the owners’ loss, was the ‘inconvenience’ to Washington’s planters and businessmen.”

All this happened four years before Ivah Jean’s first husband died in late 1847, and before she married Moore in November 1848. A son of Ivah Jean and Moore, was born Dec. 16, 1857 lived only a week, dying Dec. 23, 1857. A surviving, though damaged marker in the Old Farquhar Cemetery verifies this burial.

Moore died in 1866 shortly after the close of the Civil War. The 1870 U. S. Census record shows that widow Ivah Jean was living at Washington-on-the-Brazos with three of the children born of her marriage with Moore - Parthenia, age 18; son Robert, Jr., age 16; and daughter Penelope, age 14. Widow Ivah Jean died in 1879 at the home of one of her daughters.

Family records indicate that both Ivah Jean and Robert Moore are buried in the Old Farquhar Cemetery. No cemetery markers exist today. Their son, Robert, Jr., made the move to Navasota.

(Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more information and membership).