John W. Moore

Moore, born in Pennsylvania about 1797, came to Texas from Tennessee in 1830 and was elected comisario of the San Jacinto precinct in 1831. A friend of William B. Travis, he was there on July 30, 1835, when Travis's volunteers forced Antonio Tenorio to give up the fort at Anahuac. The General Council elected him army contractor in November 1835. Seated in the First Congress in October 1836, he lost the contested seat to Jesse H. Cartwright eight days later. He was a charter member of the first Odd Fellows lodge in Texas, organized at Houston in 1838.

What the plaque says

John W. Moore Opposed Bradburn at Anahuac 1832. Member of the Consultation at San Felipe in 1835. Signer of the Declaration of Independence, 1836. First sheriff of Harris County, 1837 to 1840. City alderman in Houston, 1840. Married to Eliza Belnap, February 2, 1839. Died in Houston, 1846.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.5 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.5 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 1.7 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Emancipation Park — 1.7 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.

More markers nearby

• John Kirby Allen — steps away
• George Allen — steps away
• Gravesite of John Kirby Allen — steps away
• Major Isaac N. Moreland — steps away