Samuel Logan Moore

MOORE

Posted By: County Coordinator (email)
Date: 5/27/2010 at 16:39:29

Samuel Logan Moore has justly won the proud American title of “a self made man.” Energy and industry have been the crowing points in his career, and his intelligently directed effort has carried him steadily forward to the goal of success. He is today a prominent figure in financial circles not only in Boone, but elsewhere in this and surrounding counties. Pennsylvania claims him as a native son, his birth having occurred Canonsburg, that state April 6, 1845, his parents being William and Eleanor (Hughes) Moore, both of whom were natives of Pennsylvania. The father made farming his life work and thus provided for the support of the family. Removing to the middle west, he passed away in Macoupin, Illinois, in 1864. The mother afterward came to Boone with her son Samuel, and her last days were spent in this section of the state. Unto Mr and Mrs Moore were born ten children, of whom S L was the sixth in order of birth. Only four of the number are now living: Rebecca the wife of Henry Hill of Boone, Thomas B living in Des Moines, Bell the wife of W H Jayne also of Des Moines.
Samuel Logan Moore is the other member of the family and like his brothers and sisters he spent his youthful days upon the home farm in Illinois, attending the public schools in the winter seasons and devoting his attention tot eh work of the fields through the summer months. He as but sixteen years of age when he offered his services tot eh government, enlisting as a member of Company F, Seventh Illinois Infantry on April 25, 1861, when the smoke of Fort Sumter’s guns had scarcely cleared away. He served throughout the war going to the front with his command and participating in many of the most hotly contested battles. He was honorably discharge at Louisville, Kentucky. He was mustered out at Springfield, Illinois, June 1865, with the rank of orderly sergeant, being a youth just out f his teens, although he had had much experience in connection with military life, experience of the most arduous kind.
After the close of the war Mr Moore returned to the north and was employed in a warehouse at Bunker Hill, Illinois, until 1866, and the following year he came with his mother to Boone and entered upon railroad work as a switchman n the service of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company. He was employed I that capacity and as a yardmaster for eighteen years, or until about 1885, when he entered banking circles and has since been prominently identified with financial interests in his county. Gradually in this connection he has worked his way upward. He organized the First National Bank and has continuously been its president. He has also become an officer ad stockholder in seven other Iowa banks, being connected with the Security Savings Bank of Boone and with six country banks. He is likewise identified with three Oklahoma banks and one in North Dakota. At the time he organized the First National there was two banks in Boone, one of which was a private institution. He is also president of the Boone Blank Book Company, is interested in Spurrier Lumber company, the Brick & Tile Company, and in other industrial and manufacturing enterprises. He is a large landowner in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Oklahoma. His worth is well known, his enterprise is unfaltering, and at all times he most carefully safeguards the interests of his patrons by tempering progressiveness with a wife conservation.
Mr Moore is well known in fraternal circles, holding membership with the Masonic Lodge and the Eastern Star, the Independent Order of Off Fellows ad the Rebekah degree. He also wars the little bronze button that indicates him a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and through that organization he maintains close and cordial relations with those who were the nation’s blue uniform when he, too, was fighting for the supremacy of the flag and cause it represented. His religious faith is that of the Presbyterian church, ad his life, honorable and upright an all of its purposes and principles, has given him high standing in both business and social circles. Mr Moore greatly enjoys travel and has crossed the ocean eight times, traveling around the world four times. He is modest in demeanor a assumes no special credit for what he has accomplished but the office of biography is to give voice to a man’s modest estimate of himself ad his accomplishments but rather to leave the perpetual record establishing his position by the consensus of opinion on the part of his fellowmen, and judged this way Mr Moore ranks as a leading citizen of Iowa, for the extent and importance of his business affairs have impressed his name indelibly upon the material development of the state, while his support of progressive measures along other lines has shown him to be a man of broad public spirit whose fidelity to the better interests of the community is unquestioned.

1914 Boone County History Book