Dennis Moore, Allen Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller


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Dennis Moore is clerk of court for Allen Parish, with home at Oberlin, 
where he also has a number of business interests.  His father was one 
of the pioneers of that town, and the family
has been one of prominence in Southwest Louisiana for a great many years.

Dennis Moore was born in Rapides Parish, December 13, 1880. His father, 
Joseph W. Moore, was born in County Mayo, Ireland, September 29, 1835, 
son of Daniel and Winifred (Meloy) Moore, and after getting a substantial 
education in Dublin ran away from home to come to the United States in 1853, 
being then eighteen years of age. During 1853-34 he was employed as clerk 
on a Mississippi River steamboat. In 1838 he married Elizabeth Cavanaugh, 
a native of Alabama, who died in 1882. Not long after his marriage the 
war broke out between the states and he enlisted in Company B of the 
Twenty-seventh Louisiana Infantry. He was captured at the fall of Vicksburg.  
After the war he removed to Alexandria and served as the first parish recorder 
of Rapides Parish after the war. One term in this office and he engaged in 
the mercantile business at Leesville in Vernon Parish, and also had interests 
in the logging and the manufacture of lumber and the mercantile business at 
West Port in Rapides Parish. In 1882 he became a merchant at Sugartown, 
served as master of the Masonic Lodge there, and in 1892 removed to Oberlin,
assisting in incorporating that town and thereafter remained a leader in its 
life and affairs. He was a merchant at Oberlin and one of the organizers of 
the First National Bank and was the first master of Oberlin Lodge No. 274, 
Free and Accepted Masons. Joseph W. Moore died at Oberlin in 1914.

Dennis Moore acquired his early education in schools at Sugartown, attended 
the Oberlin Public School and the private school of Professor John Evans at 
Glenmora.  He finished his education with two years in the Louisiana State 
University.  At intervals during his youth and early manhood, he was associated 
with his father in the mercantile business at Oberlin, but in 1904 took up 
railroad service, at first as a clerk with the Louisiana & Arkansas Railroad 
at Winfield and Alexandria, then with the Rock Island Lines at Eldorado, 
Arkansas, West Memphis, Arkansas, El Reno and Ardmore, Oklahoma.  He was in 
railroad work until 1912.

In 1913 Mr. Moore became the first deputy clerk of court in Allen Parish 
under his brother, Pat E. Moore, the first to hold that office.  Dennis 
Moore in 1919 was business representative for James E. Lacey, selling 
timber land and in 1920 was elected clerk of the courts of Allen Parish
and reelected to the same office in 1924.  Since 1920 he has been president 
of the Louisiana Parish Clerk of Courts Association, and through this 
organization has been instrumental in securing much legislation to improve 
and standardize the administration of the offices of clerk of courts 
throughout the state.  Mr. Moore is a stockholder in tire First National 
Bank of Oberlin, and is a member of Rapides Lodge No. 306, Free and Accepted 
Masons.

He married at Oberlin, December 30, 1914, Miss Mary Rohrer. Their four 
children are: Mary Lucille, John Dennis, Thomas Michael and Margaret.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 272-273, by Henry E. Chambers.  
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.