Jessie Moore
Jessie Moore
“Your face has given me a message of Old Indian Territory – the glory of her days, a breath of the past from across the river of Lethe – of sorrow, and joy, and sweet life.”
Biography
Jessie Elizabeth Randolph Moore was born in Panola County in the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma in 1871. Her mother’s family came with the Chickasaws to Indian Territory in 1837, and her father was a successful cattleman who established their home and ranch in the White Bead Hill region north of the Washita in Pontotoc County. Mrs. Moore was sent to an academy in Denison, Texas, and later attended Kidd-Key College in Sherman, Texas. She taught school for one year and was married in 1889. In 1914, she was appointed Deputy Supreme Court Clerk in Oklahoma City, studied law, and was admitted to the Bar in 1923. The following year she was appointed Assistant Commissioner of Charities and Corrections for Oklahoma and, during the Great Depression, served as the director of the Women’s Division of Emergency Relief in Oklahoma County. Mrs. Moore also played a vital role in gathering data and preserving the history of Oklahoma in her work with the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Fun fact
In 1954, Jessie Moore served as an official representative of the Chickasaw Nation in ceremonies in Memphis, Tennessee, to dedicate a newly formed Chickasaw wing of the United States Air Force.
Oklahoma connections
Moore was born in Oklahoma at old Panola County in the Chickasaw Nation.