Johnston Moore (1809-1901)

Johnston Moore was born on September 8, 1809 at Mooredale in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania the only survivor of two sons of James and Nancy Johnston Moore. The Moore family was one of the oldest and largest landed proprietors in the county, a forebearer purchasing several thousand acres on the Yellow Breeches Creek from John Penn in 1780. Johnson's parents both died at an early age and he lived with an aunt near Greencastle and then with his guardian, Andrew Carothers, in Carlisle while he attended Dickinson College. He entered in 1825 with the class of 1829 but withdrew in 1827 when eighteen years years old. According to minutes of faculty meetings, however, Moore continued to socialize with his friends on the campus across High Street; in August 1828 he was officially expelled and banned from the campus after abusing College officers and generally causing a nuisance. Eventually, he took control of his family holdings and embarked on a long career of land management in the county.

On July 15, 1836, Moore married Mary Verzey Packer of Carlisle and the couple had nine children. He was an active member of St. John's Episcopal Church in Carlisle and a Whig and then a Republican in politics. He was an active sportsman and owned Bonny Brook on the Yellow Breeches, one of the finest trout streams in the nation to this day. From the year of his marriage, he lived on his attractive wooded estate, called "Mooreland" and including a deer park, just to the south of Dickinson College in Carlisle. (After the death of Moore's eldest daughter in 1932, Dickinson College acquired part of this estate, now called the Mooreland Campus. The name Mooreland is still used to describe the rest of that part of Carlisle.) Johnston Moore died at home on March 26, 1901 at the age of ninety-one.