Dennis Moore, Rapides Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller

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Dennis Moore is clerk of court for Allen Parish, with home at 
Oberlin, where he also has a number of business interests.  His 
father was one of the pioneers of that town, and the family has 
been one of prominence in Southwest Louisiana for a great many 
years.

Dennis Moore was born in Rapides Parish, December 13, 1880.  His 
father, Joseph W. Moore, was born in County Mayo, Ireland, 
September 29, 1835, son of Daniel and Winifred (Meloy) Moore, 
and after getting a substantial education in Dublin ran away 
from home to come to the United States in 1853, being then 
eighteen years of age.  During 1853-34 he was employed as clerk 
on a Mississippi River steamboat.  In 1838 he married Elizabeth 
Cavanaugh, a native of Alabama, who died in 1882.  Not long 
after his marriage the war broke out between the states and he 
enlisted in Company B of the Twenty-seventh Louisiana Infantry.  
He was captured at the fall of Vicksburg.  After the war he 
removed to Alexandria and served as the first parish recorder 
of Rapides Parish after the war.  One term in this office and 
he engaged in the mercantile business at Leesville in Vernon 
Parish, and also had interests in the logging and the manufacture 
of lumber and the mercantile business at West Port in Rapides 
Parish.  In 1882 he became a merchant at Sugartown, served as 
master of the Masonic Lodge there, and in 1892 removed to Oberlin, 
assisting in incorporating that town and thereafter remained a 
leader in its life and affairs.  He was a merchant at Oberlin 
and one of the organizers of the First National Bank and was 
the first master of Oberlin Lodge No. 274, Free and Accepted 
Masons. Joseph W. Moore died at Oberlin in 1914.

Dennis Moore acquired his early education in schools at Sugartown, 
attended the Oberlin Public School and the private school of 
Professor John Evans at Glenmora.  He finished his education 
with two years in the Louisiana State University.  At intervals 
during his youth and early manhood, he was associated with his 
father in the mercantile business at Oberlin, but in 1904 took 
up railroad service, at first as a clerk with the Louisiana & 
Arkansas Railroad at Winfield and Alexandria, then with the Rock 
Island Lines at Eldorado, Arkansas, West Memphis, Arkansas, El 
Reno and Ardmore, Oklahoma.  He was in railroad work until 1912.

In 1913 Mr. Moore became the first deputy clerk of court in Allen 
Parish under his brother, Pat E. Moore, the first to hold that 
office.  Dennis Moore in 1919 was business representative for 
James E. Lacey, selling timber land and in 1920 was elected 
clerk of the courts of Allen Parish and reelected to the same 
office in 1924.  Since 1920 he has been president of the Louisiana 
Parish Clerk of Courts Association, and through this organization 
has been instrumental in securing much legislation to improve and 
standardize the administration of the offices of clerk of courts 
throughout the state.  Mr. Moore is a stockholder in tire First 
National Bank of Oberlin, and is a member of Rapides Lodge No. 306, 
Free and Accepted Masons.

He married at Oberlin, December 30, 1914, Miss Mary Rohrer.  Their 
four children are:  Mary Lucille,  John Dennis,  Thomas Michael 
and  Margaret.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 272-273, by Henry E. Chambers.  
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and 
New York, 1925.