Turner Moore
Named in the Freedman’s Bank record as the father of Columbus Jones, Reconstruction-era legislator — and almost nothing else. No document names the white Moore who enslaved him.
Life in brief
Turner Moore is named as the father of Columbus Jones in Columbus’s Freedman’s Bank signature register, opened October 2, 1867: “father Turner Moore d Mar 1867 at son’s home.” Documented He died in March 1867, at his son’s home, roughly three miles northwest of Huntsville at the end of Athens Pike. Documented No other record names him — not the census, not the voter registers, not the Freedman’s Bureau contracts. Unresolved The white Moore who enslaved him has not been identified; the evidence that Columbus’s family and the Moore plantations were connected is circumstantial, and forced separation by sale remains unsupported. Unresolved
Records
Enslaved — by whom, unknown Unresolved
No pre-1867 record names Turner Moore. No record identifies the white Moore who enslaved him. A candidate enslaver is Benjamin T. Moore (1813–1878), the Madison County lawyer and nephew of Governor Gabriel Moore who took over his uncle’s estate in the 1830s — but no document ties Turner to Benjamin, and the identification is not proven.
Death, at his son’s home Documented
Columbus’s bank register: “father Turner Moore d Mar 1867 at son’s home.” His son’s home stood about three miles northwest of Huntsville at the end of Athens Pike. No burial record has been found.
Named as Columbus’s father Documented
Registers of Signatures of Depositors, Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Huntsville branch (NARA M816, Roll 1) — Columbus Jones entry. The register’s father field reads: “Turner Moore d Mar 1867 at son’s home.”
Kinship
Columbus Jones
The only source for this relationship is Columbus’s own bank register. Documented
Turner Anderson · Turner Jones · the 1866 signer
Turner Anderson (the Louisa County name) is a different man. Turner Jones, Columbus’s brother, was alive in 1867 and cannot be Columbus’s father. The “Turner Moore” who signed a Freedman’s Bureau contract in 1866 is unassigned and unidentified. Unresolved
Places
What the record doesn’t say
The silence ledger for Turner Moore
- No record identifies the white Moore who enslaved Turner. Benjamin T. Moore is a candidate enslaver, not a proven one.
- Forced separation by sale — the mechanism by which Turner came to be separated from his son — remains unsupported. The evidence slightly favors a neighboring-plantations or “abroad marriage” structure, but the mechanism is unknown.
- No census, voter register, or Bureau record names Turner Moore. The 1867 voter registers contain no “Turner Moore,” consistent with his March 1867 death.
- The unresolved 1866 Freedman’s Bureau contract signer “Turner Moore” is kept unassigned — not merged with Turner here, not merged with Turner Jones.
- No burial record, no age, no birthplace, no occupation. He exists in the archive as a name in his son’s hand.
Sources
- Registers of Signatures of Depositors in Branches of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, 1865–1874, Huntsville, Alabama (National Archives Microfilm Publication M816, Roll 1) — Columbus Jones entry, October 2, 1867; extracted in Fred C. Rathbun, Names from Huntsville, Alabama, 1865–1869.
- Alabama Department of Archives and History, 1867 Voter Registration Books, Madison County vols. 1–2 — no “Turner Moore” entry.
- Ben Hoksbergen and Jane DeNeefe, “Keeping Up with the Joneses: Tracing the Lives and Legacies of Two Reconstruction-Era Legislators from Madison County,” Alabama Review 79, no. 3 (July 2026).