John Trotwood Moore (1858–1929) was an American journalist, writer and local historian. He was the author of many poems, short stories and novels. He served as the State Librarian and Archivist of Tennessee from 1919 to 1929. He created Moore Academy in Pine Apple, Alabama in 1883. He was "an apologist for the Old South",[1] and a proponent of lynching.
Moore started his career as a journalist for The Marion Commonwealth, a newspaper in Marion, Alabama.[3] He was a schoolteacher in Monterey, Butler County, Alabama, and a school principal in Pine Apple, Alabama, in the early 1880s.[1]
Moore became a columnist for Clark's Horse Review in 1885.[3] He took the penname of "Trotwood" after Betsey Trotwood, a character in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield.[4] His column, called "Pacing Department", included short stories, poems and local histories. In 1897, Moore decided to publish a collection of his columns, entitled Songs and Stories from Tennessee. Four years later, in 1901, he published his first novel A Summer Hymnal.[3] Over the years, Moore published several other novels.
Moore founded Trotwood's Monthly, an agrarian magazine, in 1905. A year later, as it merged with Robert Love Taylor's magazine, it became known as the Taylor-Trotwood Magazine. Moore was the chief writer and editor. The magazine was discontinued in 1910.[3] Meanwhile, he was the author of historical sketches on Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, James K. Polk and Sam Houston.[5] He was also a contributor to The Saturday Evening Post.[5]
Moore was "an apologist for the Old South."[1] Labeled a "local colorist",[6] Moore's fiction typically included African Americans, horses, Native Americans, bluegrass, and Tennessee culture.[7] The main repeating character in his stories, Old Wash, was compared to the Uncle Remus character created by his contemporary, Joel Chandler Harris.[6] Moore was contemptuous of low-class whites and criticized Thomas Dixon for writing sensationalist novels.[6]
Moore married Florence W. Allen in February 1885.[3] They resided in Columbia, Tennessee, where they raised Tennessee Pacers on their farm.[3] After his first wife died in 1896, Moore married Mary Brown Daniel on June 13, 1900.[3] They had a son, and two daughters.[3] They resided in South Nashville, Tennessee, where they organized possum hunts and literary gatherings.[1]
Moore died on May 10, 1929, in Nashville.[3][5] The governor of Tennessee ordered state offices closed and flags to fly at half-mast. He was also one of the honorary pallbearers, along with four past governors. The actual pallbearers were African Americans clad in Confederate grey.[1] He was buried at the Mount Olivet Cemetery.[3]
After his death, his widow was appointed State Librarian and Archivist for Tennessee.[2][8] She served in this capacity until 1949.[2][8] Meanwhile, their son, Merrill Moore, became a poet and member of a circle of writers known as "The Fugitives", who were partly inspired by Moore's own writing.[1] One of his daughters, Helen Lane Moore, married Whitefoord Russell Cole Jr., the son of railroad executive Whitefoord Russell Cole.[9]
In 2019, the plaque that Moore dedicated to Jefferson Davis at a church in 1925 was moved to the church's archives. The pastor cited Moore's involvement as one of the reasons for the removal.[10]
^ abcdefghijklmnopqBailey, Fred Arthur (Spring 1999). "John Trotwood Moore and the Patrician Cult of the New South". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 58 (1): 16–33. JSTOR42627447.
^ abcThweatt, John H. (Fall 1991). "The Archival Tradition in Tennessee—the Moore Years". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 50 (3): 152–156. JSTOR42626953.
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