By Staff
I meant to tell you more about the Bush family this week but something else came up that I thought I would do first.
The other day I had a call from Bobby Cosey, who lives on Jay Road near Riverview. He told me about a tombstone located between two of the ponds owned by W.E. Townsend. The tombstone has a most unusual verse written on it and makes one wonder just who this person was who is buried there.
I met with Mr. Cosey and Bill Parker and we trekked over to where the stone is located. It was on one of the coldest days of this season and the wind was enough to chill the bones. Mr. Parker told me a story behind the tombstone and I thought the readers might be interested.
He was buried near the burial site of his horse. According to Mr. Parker, Moore had previously composed the verse that was placed on his grave. The verse reads, "Here lies the bones of poor Bill Moore. No one to weep, no one to mourn. Where he is, and how he fares, no one knows and no one to care." On the other side of the stone it reads, "W.E. Moore, Born Feb. 1878, Died April 18, 1905."
The story that Mr. Parker related was that Moore was buried with a pair of pearl-handled Colt 45's and a pocket watch of some value. Over the years people have dug into the grave hoping to find the valuable items. Mr. Parker said that when he was a youngster, he had to go down and fill in holes left by the vandals. There is no record of this small cemetery in "Headstones and Heritages." Mr. Parker believes that there are at least two more graves there but any other marker that may have been there is now gone.
Both Mr. Parker and Mr. Cosey were willing to share their knowledge of this lone tombstone in the hopes that someone or some group would be willing to build a fence to surround the grave. Right now the tombstone makes a good back scratcher for some cows and it has already been knocked to the ground several times. I pass this story along to you in the same hope that someone or some group will take the fencing of this small plot as a project. Wherever this young man is, maybe he would be aware that finally someone does care about him.
Mr. Cosey told me that Ed Leigh McMillan had some material on Moore. I called McMillan Trust and Paula Dunaway was kind enough to find a few minutes to check. Sure enough, they did indeed have a file on Moore. There was even an article done by The Brewton Standard in 1974 that told the story of "poor old Bill Moore."
Next week I will tell you the story that was recorded in the McMillan file. It varies somewhat from the information given today, but I wanted you to have both versions.