John Trotwood Moore


John Trotwood Moore 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 was "an apologist for the Old South", and a proponent of lynching.

Early life

John Moore, Jr., was born on August 26, 1858 in Marion, Alabama. He was of Scotch-Irish descent. His father, John Moore, was a lawyer and Confederate veteran. His mother was named Emily. He had a sister, who later married a professor at Vanderbilt University.
Moore graduated from Howard College, now known as Samford University, where he studied the classics, and was a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. While in college, he wrote The Howard College Magazine. Later, he read law with Hilary A. Herbert.

Career

Moore started his career as a journalist for The Marion Commonwealth, a newspaper in Marion, Alabama. He was a schoolteacher in Monterey, Butler County, Alabama and a school principal in Pine Apple, Alabama in the early 1880s.
Moore became a columnist for Clark's Horse Review in 1885. He took the penname of "Trotwood" after Betsey Trotwood, a character in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield. 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. 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. Meanwhile, he was the author of historical sketches on Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, James K. Polk and Sam Houston. He was also a contributor to The Saturday Evening Post.
Moore was appointed as the State Librarian and Archivist for Tennessee by Governor Albert H. Roberts in March 1919. He was recommended by businessman James Erwin Caldwell. He served in this capacity until 1929.
Moore was "an apologist for the Old South." He was invited to give a speech at the dedication of a bronze plaque in honor of President Jefferson Davis at St. John's Episcopal Church in Montgomery, Alabama in May 1925.
Moore was openly racist. His racist ideas were reinforced by his reading Joseph Widney's 1907 Race Life of the Aryan Peoples, a book recommended to him by Theodore Roosevelt, which Moore proceeded to review favorably. He was a defender of the Ku Klux Klan and a proponent of lynching. Additionally, Moore was francophobic for racist reasons, lambasting the French for "intermarrying with the Indians and treating them as equals" during the French colonization of the Americas.

Personal life

Moore married Florence W. Allen in February 1885. They resided in Columbia, Tennessee, where they raised Tennessee Pacers on their farm. After his first wife died in 1896, Moore married Mary Brown Daniel on June 13, 1900. They had a son, and two daughters. They resided in South Nashville, Tennessee, where they organized possum hunts and literary gatherings.
Moore was Presbyterian.

Death and legacy

Moore died on May 10, 1929 in Nashville. At his funeral, the pallbearers were African Americans clad in Confederate uniforms. He was buried at the Mount Olivet Cemetery.
After his death, his widow was appointed State Librarian and Archivist for Tennessee. She served in this capacity until 1949. Meanwhile, their son, Merrill Moore, became a poet. One of his daughters, Helen Lane Moore, married Whitefoord Russell Cole, Jr., the son of railroad executive Whitefoord Russell Cole.
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.