MOORE, Mary Forman Warford – (1870-1954) was the daughter of Hugh and Sidney Forman Warford.
She has the distinction of having resided in three of Frenchtown's grandest homes. Her girlhood was spent in the (now gone) three-story brick house at 11 Bridge Street. When she was about 17, her father died, and she and her mother moved across the street to her grandmother's big residence at 12 Bridge Street. Later on, she would reside in the Hudnit mansion on the northeast corner of Harrison and Fourth streets.
She was the wife of William L. Moore (1865-1926), pastor of the Frenchtown Presbyterian Church in 1900-04. Their daughter, also named Mary Moore (1905-1987), became a Frenchtown High School teacher.
A 1931 event gives a glimpse of the Mary-Moore style. The two Mary Moores hosted a garden party for the graduating class of FHS. It featured Milford upper-cruster Bert Thomas, who told the new grads about his recent trip around the world. To distinguish between the two Mary Moores, one was called Ol' Mary Moore and the other was naturally Young Mary Moore.
Gloria Sipes Paleveda wrote that in the 1930s “there was no driveway in the backyard. Instead the Moores had maintained a formal garden, lined with tall poplar trees, with graceful white benches to rest on amidst the flowers and shrubs. The house itself was gleaming white.”
Rev. Moore was long dead and young Mary was teaching school out-of-state, when Ol' Mary Moore came to the notice of young Gloria Sipes. Gloria would walk past her stately home four times every school day, including lunchtime trips home.
Moore's “hair was white and pulled back loosely in an easy knot. He face was lined, her body had a look of peasant solidness, but Mary Moore was a lady with great dignity. She was not tall, but her voice was full and she framed her words as she spoke each one distinctly and firmly. Mary Moore was adept in the art of conversation. Even with a child.”
One summer afternoon 8-year-old Gloria was strolling up Harrison Street holding a bundle of library books, when Moore called to her, “Hello, Gloria, and how are you on this beautiful day?”
Moore asked about the books and before Gloria had finished answering, she'd been invited “into her garden as if I were a grown-up, afternoon lady caller.”
They sat chatting on the benches “while she transported herself and me back to days dear to her, days when her husband was alive and their daughter was a child. She talked about her husband's ministry, about their different pets, especially a cat and his human ways, about how she (Mary) enjoyed long, long walks.”
It was common for her to walk to Easton, Pa., or Flemington, sometimes accepting a ride and sometimes declining graciously. She walked year-round, carrying a hot water bottle under her thin brown coat in winter.
Classiness aside, one might wonder how the widow of a minister could afford to live in a mansion. Her parents had owned two mansions and a hotel, plus prime downtown commercial property on the west side of town in the late 1800s. Ol' Mary Moore seems to have been spending down the last of a substantial inheritance.
She moved to a smaller house on Fourth Street. Neighbor Kathleen Sinclair Pegg recalled that Moore would play the role of teacher in games of Chinese School. The neighborhood children would sit on the bottom step. A correct answer to one of Moore's questions entitled a child to move up one step, hoping to reach the top step and “graduate.”
Here is a note that Moore sent to Harold Dilts (and probably to his brothers-in-law) in May of 1954 on the occasion of Dilts' first wife's death and on the eve of her own. On the margin was written what may seem like a boast, but was probably an explanation of poor handwriting: “Written without glasses at past 84 years of age.”
My Dear Friends:
Allow me to express to you three gentlemen my deepest sympathy in the departure of Catherine, whom we all dearly loved. I knew the mother well and can but think how happy the two are in that beautiful City of God. In our lives one must go on and must trod the lonely paths, but we have the comfort of knowing we shall meet again, when the shadows are lifted and we meet again. I can trust you three to be brave in this sad hour. Again the sympathy of her aged friend.
Thine most sincerely,
Mary F.W. Moore
Paleveda wrote, “Mary Moore's manners and intellect remained high and she wore until the end that great cloak of dignity and spirit that neither poverty nor loneliness could ever make threadbare.”
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"
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