Ralph E. Moore of Bluff Springs, Fla.
The places where we live, just dots on a map to outsiders, hold a far greater meaning to those who occupy the dots. They are the places we have lived and loved, learned to walk, to talk, to pray, our battlegrounds, and the burial grounds of our ancestors.
As much as these mapped dots matter to us, they are like the canvas of an artist and as each generation passes the canvas to the next, new colors and hues are added to the picture.
This picture of our area, added to by each generation; may show buildings, barns, people, pastures but nothing may tell a more stoic story than the sacred stones of our burial grounds-cemeteries; grave-yards, if you will. Pleasant Hill Cemetery, south of Century, Florida along Highway 29, is one such cemetery with a story to tell.
On any given Spring Sunday, the wind sweeps the cemetery, ebbing and flowing over and around such graves as James L. Bryars, a local minister who walked countless miles to preach the Gospel and founded many of our local churches with his evanglestic zeal.
Others like Adolph Canal, born February 12, 1861 from West Winsted Conn., who died at Bluff Springs on January 29, 1899, leave us wondering what their lives were like. Others like Danny Ray Darby, and many other young people, left us too soon.
Yet it's another young man interred in the cemetery who seems to stand as silent sentinel over the cemetery and church yard.
Young master Ralph E. Moore was born June 4, 1885 in Alabama. At some point his family migrated to Bluff Springs, where he was educated at a local school. Moore died before his 18th birthday, having passed on May 8, 1903. In the crumbling, gray monument is imprinted a grainy, fading photo of the young man in a soldier's uniform.
At first one might assume he died in the Phillipines fighting rebels after the US wrested the islands from the Spanish, or perhaps in a shipwreck on the way to some exotic land.
Yet after reviewing old copies of The Pensacola News Journal- from May 26, 1903, a hint at his untimely demise speaks from the yellowing pages of history. It seems that fate caught up to Ralph Moore not far from his native Alabama, in the now forgotten town of Griffin, Mississippi on May 8, 1903. The paper noted he was at his place of employment when the "bursting of a pulley," took his life.
The writer went on to note his knowledge of Moore's life, "He was at one time our pupil under our care, and we can remember him now a handsome, dark haired little fellow, always obedient, always neat and attentive. He was just seventeen years, eleven months old, but he seemed older, and was a youth of much promise, yet once again we are made to realize that in the midst of life, we are ever in the presence of death." The writer, identified simply as "A Friend," perhaps captured Moore's seventeen years in those few words as succiently as any biographer could.
Today Ralph Moore stands a silent guard over the cemetery. His grainy picture reaches to us from early in the last century and waits to tell his story to any who have the time to hear.
Quote of the week: "A majority of Americans are fearful about their nation's future because they have lost sight of their nation's past."
Shadows and Dust Volume III: Legacies is available for purchase in the amount of $30.00+$5.00 shipping and handling to PO Box 579 Atmore, AL 36502 or visit Lulu Publishing.com; Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobles.com OR at the Monroe County Heritage Museum in Monroeville, Alabama or by calling 251 294 0293.
