2026 – 16 A Quiet Life: Uncle Bill

 

William Antino Moore, My Maternal Great Granduncle

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 16

Prompt: A Quiet Life

William Antino Moore’s early life started with a bang. His mother, Lucenda Boone, and her husband Lew Boone were living near downtown Tulsa when Lew was shot and killed. (Blog 2025 – 37) The newspaper article about Lew’s murder ends by saying, “He leaves a widow and three children. The family is in very hard circumstances and live at present in a tent near the cemetery.” Uncle Bill, his twin sister Elizabeth, and younger sister Anna were those three children.

Lucenda had documented her marriage to Josiah Coon and the birth records of her children in what our family calls “the Bible page,” just days before Josiah died.

“My twins born in Tulsa Town in I T in Aug 1st 1905 cross street in old house from railroad tracks. Dr. McGinnis name them Billy Antino and Lizzie.”

The 1910 census shows widowed Lucenda, now using the surname of her former husband Josiah Coon, living on a home in the Lynn Lane area of Tulsa County with five children—Burtie, Frank, Willie, Lizzie, and Anna. But later that year, arrangements were made to place the younger three, ages six and four, in the Sand Springs Home.

Bill Moore, Far left, front row, during his short time at the Sand Springs Home.

A letter written by Mr. Breeding of the Home in 1915 states that William never developed mentally and was committed to the state institution in Norman.

In 1920, there is a 17-year-old William Moore enumerated at the state penitentiary in McAlester, working as a woodcutter in the lumber camp. This may be Uncle Bill.

In the 1930 census, he is living in a tent near Newblock Park with his mother and stepfather William Scott, who was a trash hauler. Bill is not working but is recorded as married. I have never seen a marriage record for Uncle Bill, but this census record says that he is divorced. The image appears to have been marked “S” for single, then written over with an “M” and a small “D.” It is also marked “Yes” for veteran of a war.

The 1940 enumeration places Bill in the Eastern State Hospital in Vinita in both 1935 and 1940, which is confirmed in the 1938 obituary for Lucenda.

Uncle Bill was one of three great-uncles known to me. I wrote about Frank in Blog 2025 – 41 and Robert in Blog 2025 – 21. They were all quiet men. My grandmother would drive to Vinita to pick up Robert and Bill and bring them back to Sand Springs for family holiday gatherings.

They were like the three monkeys sitting on a limb—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

But they were family. And they were included.

Frank Coon, Leonard Nolen, Robert Noland and William Moore.

Nolen family plot, Woodlawn Cemetery, Sand Springs, OK