Col. John Moore of New York City

After two years of writing, editing, rewriting and re-editing, the entire article on Col. John Moore and his wife, Frances Lambert, has been published. It appears in two parts, in the New York Genealogical and Biographical RECORD: Vol. 143, Number 3, July 2012, and Number 4, October 2012. I hope all of you who are interested in family history will seek out these two issues from your library. Quite a few new discoveries about our Moore lineage have been made in the last 5 years or so, and I crammed as much of it into the article as space would allow.

Some of you have asked how to obtain copies of the article published in two issues of the RECORD. If they are not available in your local library, you can contact the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society RECORD, 36 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036-8105. Single issues are $7.50 each. The website address is: www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org

The article is in Vol. 143, Number 3, July 2012, and Number 4, October 2012.

Terri Bradshaw ONeill

Colleyville, Texas

Trinity Church, New York City

by David Jeffreys - ©July, 2009
When I became interested in Moore genealogy back in 1976, I began looking to Stephen's ancestors, and in particular his father, Col. John Moore of New York City. Thus, I wrote to Trinity Church for information in 1977 and this was the reply:

(click on images to make them more readable)

With more research, I found:

John Moore, Esq. (1745-1828), the grandson of Col. John Moore of New York City, wrote on 29th April 1821:

“My Grandfather was . . . .born in South Carolina 11 August, 1686, and died at New York the 29th October in 1749, and was the first corpse interred in the Family vault, south side of Trinity church-yard. I had the stone with his name cut at full length placed over it. Uncle Lambert Moore paid the expense.”

During the Stephen Moore Reunion at West Point in 1991, some of us took a side trip into New York City, worshipped at Trinity Church on 28 July 1991, and walked around the area including Moore Street.

Also, I was able to gather some more information about the history of Trinity Church and the churchyard.

The John Moore vault is in the Sec. S.3.

According to the green brochure above "a city ordinance prohibiting any further burials in lower Manhattan . . . [about] 1843. During the first decades of the 19th century all of the city's burial grounds had become overcrowded and unsanitary as recurrent epidemics raged, and mortality soared yearly."

Approximately 1983, Terri O'Neill copied from the Trinity Burial Register the following information about the John Moore vault:

"John Moore Vault 11 feet south of L Reade vault, south side of Church"-
1) John Moore, Esq. died 29 Oct 1749...was the first corpse interred in family vault South side of Trinity Church.
2) His wife Frances Lambert died 1782 March
3) Rebecca Moore [daughter of John & Frances]
4) Susannah (Moore) wife of John Smyth of NY
5) Lambert Moore
6) Thomas Moore 1784
7) Elizabeth (Channing) Moore 1805
8) Daniel Moore, Capt of British man of war, killed at sea 1777
9) Judith (Livingston) Moore, daughter of James Livingston, Esq. of Poughkeepsie, 1813
10) John Moore died 1828
11) Magdalen M. Onderdonk, died Oct 1836. Moved from St. Ann's Ground, Brooklyn, 3/16/1860. [She was a daughter of Lambert Moore.]
12) Jane (Holland) Moore died 14 June 1767. [First wife of Lambert Moore]

The last burial in the vault, according to Trinity Church records, parish burial register, vol. 2:482, was the son of John Moore, Esq., Thomas William Channing Moore, d. 7 Dec 1872, burial-10 Dec.

The Organ

When we were in New York City in 1991 worshipping as the descendants of John Moore, we heard the magnificent 1823 Skinner Organ. Just ten years later and 600 feet away, the World Trade Center collapsed on 9-11-2001. See the first postcard picture of the church above with the World Trade Center tower in the background. The Trinity Church building and its facade were left relatively unhurt; however, the resulting dust all but destroyed the organ. The Aeolian-Skinner organ was taken apart and stored, perhaps awaiting restoration or perhaps replaced by a new pipe organ, either of which will be very expensive. For the interim, a digital organ, was built and installed there in 2003 by Marshall & Ogletree of Needham Heights, Massachusetts. For an electronic digital organ, it is at the cutting edge of technology especially with its sampling of organ notes. Owen Burdick, the organist, insists that as fine as this interim instrument sounds, a pipe organ will be back.