Wake-Caldwell County NcArchives Biographies.....Moore, Hight C. 1848 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/ncfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 February 29, 2008, 4:05 pm Author: Leonard Wilson (1916) HIGHT C. MOORE THE Reverend Hight C. Moore, editor of the "Biblical Recorder," has gained the reputation of being one of the strongest literary figures in the present-day life of North Carolina, and to his credit, be it said, has used his talents with a single eye to the moral betterment of his generation. Mr. Moore was born at Globe, Caldwell County, North Carolina, on January 28, 1871. His father was Petterson Moore, and his mother was Nancy Ann Moore, daughter of Jesse Moore. This Moore family is distinct from the one settled in eastern North Carolina, of which the old Colonial Governor was the founder, and was founded by Jesse Moore, who moved from Fluvanna, Virginia, just prior to the Revolutionary War and settled in Globe Valley, North Carolina, under the shadow of Blowing Rock and Grandfather Mountain. The Moores of eastern North Carolina are of Irish descent. The Moores of Piedmont, Virginia, were mostly of English stock, though perhaps not entirely free from a trace of Irish blood. Jesse Moore, Sr., the North Carolina pioneer, was born in 1743. He settled in the Globe Valley in 1707, and died there in March, 1827, at the age of eighty-four. He left a son, Jesse, Jr., who was born just before he left Virginia in 1767, and died in Globe, June 25, 1854, at the age of eighty-six years, eleven months and six days. His son Daniel, born July 14, 1797, and died April 16, 1873, was the paternal grandfather of Hight C. Moore; and his son Job, born December 4, 1799, and died January 22, 1885, was the paternal grandfather of Hight C. Moore's mother. Her father, Jesse Moore, son of Job above mentioned, was born September 3, 1827, and died in July, 1906. Elizabeth Moore, wife of Jesse Moore, Jr., died January 13, 1859, having reached the great age of ninety-two years, three months and twenty-three days. Mr. Moore's paternal grandmother was Betsey E. Hight, and his mother's paternal grandmother was Nancy Stone Hight. These two were sisters, daughters of Read Hight, a Virginia planter, and school teacher, who settled in Caldwell County, married Molly Webb, and died about 1836. An old record which Mr. Moore found on the fly-leaf of a Sheridan's dictionary, published in Philadelphia in 1790, ran as follows: "John Hight, son of Thomas Hight, born January 17, 1726; Betsey Hight, daughter of John Hight, born June 15, 1755; Thomas, born September 21, 1757; William, born March 11, 1760; Sarah, born May 20, 1762; John, born December 20, 1764; Read, born November 2, 1767; Polly, born May 28, 1770; Jennie, born November 1, 1772; and Naomi, born April 24, 1775." There is a division of opinion as to the Hights. The name was found in Pennsylvania and Virginia under two spellings, Hight and Hite. The latter family was much more numerous and came into the Valley of Virginia from Pennsylvania and greatly multiplied. They were clearly German. The other family, it is claimed, was of English origin, was much less numerous, and was found east of the Blue Ridge. The weight of evidence is against this claim of English origin. It does not appear as an English name in any of the standard authors dealing with English names, and the probabilities are that they were of the same stock as the majority using the other spelling, who had strayed away from the main line of travel followed by the German immigrants to Virginia, and who had adopted the variation in spelling the name in one of those curious and not understandable ways, in which such things come about. Among the lists of early immigrants to Virginia appear the names of John Moore, aged nineteen, who came over in 1634 in the ship "Bonaventure;" another John, aged thirty-six, who came over in the "Bona Nova" in 1620, and Elizabeth, who came over in the "Abigail" in 1622. These may or may not have left families. There is no further record, but in the list of early immigrants to Virginia, between 1640 and 1700, appear several Moores, some of whom did become the founders of families. These were all supposedly of English stock. The most conspicuous of the descendants of these early Virginia Moores were General Bernard Moore, who married Catherine Spottswood; and the Episcopal Bishop Moore. In that section of Piedmont, Virginia, consisting of Fluvanna, Albemarle, Nelson, Amherst and Campbell Counties, the Moores were well represented, and one of the old Episcopal parishes in Campbell County was known as Moore's Parish. It is from the Moores who settled in that section that the family of Hight C. Moore is descended. Mr. Moore attended the common schools of his neighborhood, the Globe Academy, and then entered Wake Forest College, from which he was graduated a Bachelor of Arts in 1890. Among his classmates were the distinguished Rev. Dr. John E. White, now of Anderson, South Carolina, and the Honorable T. W. Bickett, present Attorney General of North Carolina. Later, in the fall of 1893, Mr. Moore took a special course of study in the Rochester, New York, Theological Seminary, since which time he has followed the vocation of a Baptist preacher. From 1890 to 1893 Mr. Moore was pastor of the church at Morehead City, North Carolina. In 1893 and 1894 he served at Brown Memorial Church in Winston-Salem. From 1894 to 1898 he was in charge of the First Church of Monroe, and from 1898 to 1903, the First Church of New Bern. In 1903 and 1904 he was pastor of Chapel Hill. From 1904 to 1907 he was Sunday-school Secretary to the Baptist State Convention, to which were added, in 1906 and 1907, the duties of Statistical Secretary. During these years from 1895 to 1907 Mr. Moore was assistant Recording Secretary of the Baptist State Convention. For a part of 1907 up to the early part of 1908 he was Field Secretary of the Sunday-school Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has its headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. On February 1, 1908, he became editor of the "Biblical Recorder," at Raleigh, which post he still retains. He is a Director in the Southern Baptist Assembly, Ridge Crest, North Carolina, Trustee of Shaw University at Raleigh, and of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, member of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, the North Carolina Press Association, of the North Carolina Folk Lore Society, and of the North Carolina Social Service Association. In 1914 Mr. Moore was elected Secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention, succeeding Rev. Lansing Burrows, D.D., who, after thirty-five years of distinguished service in that capacity, was elected President of the Convention. Notwithstanding the very busy life which Mr. Moore has led, he has found time to do considerable work as an author. In 1892 he brought out a volume of "Seaside Sermons;" in 1894, "Select Poetry of North Carolina;" in 1902, "The Books on the Bible;" in 1905, "The Country Sunday-school;" in 1911 and 1912, "North Carolina Baptist Hand Book;" and in 1912 he also brought out "The Man of Mark in the Church To-morrow." In addition to these prominent works he is the author of many monographs and pamphlets. Whatever other work Mr. Moore has done, or may do, he never has and never will surpass the work which he has done and is doing on the Biblical Recorder. He understands thoroughly the art of telling his story in the simplest fashion, and of reaching people's hearts in a way that brings results. It is questionable if the great literary characters of the world, who do what is considered classical work and appeal to men's intellects, ever accomplished a tithe of that which is done by the men who are trying to do good work, not so much with an eye to literary effect as to putting into the minds and hearts of the readers something that will be reflected in more useful lives. It would perhaps not be amiss to say that the man who writes for people's hearts will, in the end, do more good than the one who writes for their heads. This is not meant to reflect on the literary quality of Mr. Moore's work, because his reputation in that respect is established, but it is meant to convey the idea which is apparent in his work, that he is striving more to make character in the people who read after him, than he is to cultivate their intellects. In his reading Mr. Moore has devoted special study to the poets and poetry of North Carolina, and he has now in contemplation new books, some of them already in manuscript, "The Story of the Son of Man," "The Story of the Early Churches." "Mother Nook Stories" and "Sunday-school Fundamentals." Mr. Moore was married in Goldsboro, North Carolina, in the First Baptist Church, on May 2, 1893, to Laura Miller Peterson, born in Goldsboro, November 9, 1872, daughter of Joseph Eppy and Mary Catherine (Parker) Peterson. Mrs. Moore's father was for many years Mayor of Goldsboro. The son of this marriage, Joseph Peterson Moore, was born at Winston-Salem, May 3, 1894, educated in the public schools of Raleigh, Mrs. Hill College, Wake Forest College and King's Business College. He is now engaged in business in Raleigh. At its last commencement in May, 1915, Wake Forest College conferred upon Mr. Moore the degree of Doctor of Divinity, a title with which the public has not had time to become familiar, but which is eminently deserved. Referring back to the Hight family. In one of Miss Du Bellet's volumes on prominent Virginia families, the Hite family is treated. The story is too long to be recounted here, and can only be briefly noticed. In 1710 Hans Josh Heydt, or Yost Hite, as his name is spelled in English documents dated at that time, came from Strasburg, Alsace, then in France, now in Germany, with his wife Anna Maria, nee du Bois, and their little daughter Mary. He remained in Kingston, New York, until 1715, when he moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania. In 1717 he lived on Schuylkill River. In 1720 he built a mill at the mouth of Perkiomen Creek. In 1728, disgusted with the negligence of the government in protecting its people, he explored southward, and in 1730 sold out in Pennsylvania and with his family and followers emigrated to the South. He bought out John Van Meter, who had obtained a grant for forty thousand acres of land in the Shenandoah Valley, and in the spring of 1732 made the first white settlement in that beautiful but then unexplored country. He died in Frederick County, Virginia, in 1700. He was an honest, taciturn man who had command of large means, was a born leader and is said by birth to have been a German baron. He had eight children: Mary, Elizabeth, Magdalene, John, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham and Joseph. Yost Hite's descendants are now as the sands of the sea in number and scattered widely over the country. In the second generation they intermarried with the Madisons (President Madison's family), and their blood flows in the veins of an immense number of our prominent families all over the country. It is claimed that all the Hights in Virginia, whatever the spelling of the name might be, were descended from Yost Hight. Additional Comments: Extracted from: MAKERS OF AMERICA BIOGRAPHIES OF LEADING MEN OF THOUGHT AND ACTION THE MEN WHO CONSTITUTE THE BONE AND SINEW OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY AND LIFE VOLUME II By LEONARD WILSON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ASSISTED BY PROMINENT HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS Illustrated with many full page engravings B. F. JOHNSON, INC. CITY OF WASHINGTON, U. S. A. 1916 Copyright, 1916 by B. F. Johnson, Inc. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/nc/wake/bios/moore58gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/ncfiles/ File size: 12.0 Kb