The Rev. John Silliman Moore

Duane's take

The marker tells it this way, and I'm just here to pass it along. Now, some men live quiet lives and leave quiet legacies. John Silliman Moore was not one of those men.

Born in Mississippi in 1840, he came up through college in Georgia, and if that sounds like a solid enough foundation, well, the Civil War had other plans. Moore served, and he didn't just serve at one battle and come home with a story. He was wounded at Seven Pines.

Then Chancellorsville. Then Gettysburg. Three of the bloodiest engagements of that entire war, and this man walked out of all three, carrying whatever a person carries after something like that.

He kept going. After the war, he made his way to Columbia, South Carolina, graduated from the Presbyterian seminary in 1870, and then pointed himself toward Texas. Jefferson first, then Tyler, then McKinney, each one a new congregation, a new community putting its faith in this same man.

And then Sherman. In 1879, Moore took the pulpit at First Presbyterian Church in Sherman, and he stayed. He stayed until 1903, until his death, which is about as long a commitment to one place as you're likely to find.

But preaching wasn't the whole of it. Somewhere around 1875, Moore joined the board of trustees at Austin College, and for close to three decades he helped steer that institution. The board faced a question at some point: Austin College was sitting in Huntsville, and there were those who believed it belonged somewhere else.

Sherman, as it happened. Moore was part of the effort that made that relocation happen, that moved the school north and planted it in the same town where he was already building his life's work. He was on that board until about 1902, just a year before he died.

Born in Mississippi, educated in Georgia and South Carolina, wounded three times in a war that tore the country open, and then decades of steady, tireless work in Texas. John Silliman Moore didn't make a lot of noise. He just kept showing up, in town after town, year after year, until there was no more showing up to do.

What the marker says

The Rev. John Silliman Moore Born in Mississippi in 1840, John Silliman Moore attended college in Georgia before serving in the Civil War, where he was wounded at Seven Pines, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. In 1870, after graduating from the Presbyterian seminary in Columbia, South Carolina, he pastored churches in Jefferson, Tyler, McKinney and then Sherman, Texas, where he led the First Presbyterian Church from 1879 until his death in 1903. He sat on Austin College's board of trustees from c. 1875 to 1902, helping relocate the school from Huntsville to Sherman. Recorded - 2002