Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 29.djvu/290

 274 Southern Historical Society Papers.

and the personnel of the medical department, and considering it fitting that the sketch requested should preferably come from a medical officer, turned the accumulated correspondence over to him with the request that he take charge of the subject. The following is mainly a digest of that correspondence, together with such other informa- tion as has been obtained from the references hereinafter given and other sources.

Owing to the lamentable fire which occurred on the night of the evacuation of Richmond, April 2, 1865, the records of the office of the surgeon-general were almost completely destroyed or lost; and at the same time, also, the private books and papers of the family of Dr. Moore, which had been moved from his residence to a sup- posed place of safety in the district of the city afterwards burned, so that it is very difficult to obtain even a meagre account of his life prior to that time.

BIRTH AND EDUCATION.

Samuel Preston Moore, physician and surgeon, was born in

Charleston, S. C., , 1813; the son of Stephen West and

Eleanor Screven (Gilbert) Moore, and grandson of Samuel Preston and Susanna (Pearson) Moore, and was the lineal descendant of Dr. Mordecai Moore, who accompanied, as his physician, Lord Balti- more when he came to this country. By marriage and descent he was intimately connected with the families of Thomas Lloyd, the first Deputy Governor of Pennsylvania under William Penn, and in West Virginia with the Moore, Jackson, Lowndes, and Goff families. He had two brothers in the old United States army Colonel West Moore, for many years Adjutant-General of Louisiana, and Dr. Charles Lloyd Moore, surgeon.

In June, 1845, he married Mary Augusta Brown, one of the daughters of Major Jacob Brown, United States army, who was killed in the Mexican war in 1846, at the place on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, which has since been known, in honor of him, as Fort Brown, or Brownsville. General Stewart Van Vliet, United States army, married the only other daughter (and child) of Major Brown.

Dr. Moore was educated in Charleston, S. C. ; graduated in medi- cine in 1834; became assistant surgeon in the United States army, March 14, 1835; surgeon (rank of major), April 30, 1849, and re- signed February 25, 1861. From the date of his appointment as assistant surgeon he was on active duty at Fort Leavenworth, Fort