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Centre Daily Times April 25 2005
Burying an old grudge
By Rich Kerstetter; rkerstet@centredaily.com
"Descendants of two of the Houserville-area's pioneer families symbolically ended a nearly two-century-old feud Sunday afternoon, dedicating a memorial marker near the burial site of a frontier hero, 174 years to the day after he died.
About 30 people stood, some shivering, in a small strip of woods -- with a modern medical center, a recently constructed interstate highway and Mount Nittany visible to the west, north and south -- as Janet Raupach, Daughters of the American Revolution Bellefonte chapter regent, placed a wreath on a memorial stone for Robert Moore.
"Now we finally have the chance to bury the hatchet that has existed between the Moores and the Housers for all these generations," proclaimed Justin Houser, five-times-great-grandson of Jacob Houser, founder of Houserville and participant in the feud.
"It's just like seeing time unfolding right before us," said Jessica Elgan, of Harrisburg, Moore's great-great-great-great-granddaughter. "It's wonderful."
History credits Robert Moore, in 1777, with saving the lives of the earliest residents in Penns Valley -- then on the extreme edge of European settlement -- during an Indian uprising instigated by the British.
After coming upon the bodies of the Abraham Standford family, slain by marauding Indians at their cabin in what is now Potter Township, Moore warned others in the valley that the Indians intended to massacre all the colonials in their path.
Their flight over the Seven Mountains to safety in the eastern counties came to be known as the Great Runaway.
Many of them returned after peace had been restored, however, and Moore -- of Scots-Irish descent and said by historians to be an adopted son of an Indian warrior -- settled near Spring Creek, where one of his neighbors was Jacob Houser, a Pennsylvania German.
Houser built his log cabin in 1788 and soon added a grist mill and woolen mill. He was, as described by historian J. Marvin Lee, "thrifty, frugal and hardworking."
Lee could have added "litigious."
"In those days many conflicting surveys of the boundary lines fostered ill feelings and bitter conflicts ensued," Houser's great-grandson, George P. Bible, wrote in the Keystone Gazette in May 1935.
This was particularly the case, Bible noted, between Houser and his neighbors -- ironmaster Gen. Philip Benner to the east, and Moore to the west.
"Fist fights were frequent, and scarcely a session of court was held when some of these factions were not involved in litigation," Bible noted.
Houser eventually prevailed in his battle with Benner, but while the courts ruled in favor of Moore, justice was slow in coming. Moore remained bitter until the end of his life about the 3-rod-wide strip of land both men claimed and the frequent floods caused by Houser's dam on the mill stream.
In a conversation recounted in family lore and recorded in Lee's "In the Shadow of Mount Nittany," Moore reportedly pointed to a black oak along a fence line at the edge of his property and gave these instructions to his son: "When I die, I want to be buried over there under that tree."
When asked why, Moore is said to have replied, "To keep the damn Dutch off my land."
Four years ago, Marie Blazina was conducting genealogical research in the Pennsylvania Room of the Centre County Library and Historical Museum in Bellefonte and mentioned the names of a few of her ancestors.
Justin Houser was there and overheard the conversation.
"He asked me, 'Are you related to Robert Moore?'" Blazina recalled. "Then he told me, 'I'm related to Jacob Houser.'"
Both knew of the feud, of course. The two smiled, shared a few family stories and then, before parting company, Blazina suggested they do something their ancestors would have considered unthinkable: They shook hands.
And they kept in touch.
Eventually, Houser, Blazina and other relatives -- including her sister, Jessica Elgan -- decided to search for Moore's grave site, which, according to family legend, was on Penn State property.
When Moore died on April 24, 1831, his family heeded his wishes and buried him near the oak. A gravestone marked the spot for nearly a century until a well-meaning descendant, Maude Moore Miller, had it moved.
"Since it is not likely that there is now any remains of Robert Moore's body," she explained in a 1926 letter, "I decided to have the marker removed from the farm to the Slab Cabin (Spring Creek Presbyterian) Cemetery and have its placed beside that of his wife, Esther Moore's body."
Houser searched deeds in the Willowbank Building and, with the help of a map drawn by Lee, Bible's description and even a set of divining rods, they located the oak, the old fence line and the grave just over the ridge from a university sheep barn.
Lee's daughter, Nancy Lee Stover, is registrar for the Bellefonte chapter of the DAR -- and, not coincidentally, Jacob Houser's great-great-great-granddaughter. With university permission, and help from Moore's descendants, she arranged for the memorial stone to be placed at the site.
Dave Haskins, a descendant of both Robert Moore and Jacob Houser, came from Beloit, Kan., with his wife, Linda, for Sunday's ceremony.
"When we found out about it, there was no question," Linda recalled. "We were going to be here."
Haskins, whose ancestors moved to Kansas shortly after the Civil War, had been in Houserville only once before, about 20 years ago.
"My mother always wanted to get back here," he said. "She never made it."
The stone dedicated Sunday states simply, "Revolutionary War Patriot Robert Moore, Frontier Ranger, Express Rider, Born 1753, Died April 24, 1831.
The marker stands about 100 yards from the ancient oak tree and Moore's final resting place -- away from Spring Creek and its flood plain.
Elgan, competing with the wind and traffic noise from U.S. Route 220, read from Robert Moore's obituary -- printed in the Centre Democrat on May 7, 1831, and collected in "Centre County, Pennsylvania, Newspaper Death Notices, 1821-1869," compiled by Stover.
"Mr. Moore was distinguished for active and energetic services rendered in defense of the scattered inhabitants of this section of the state.
"Gifted in his constitution and muscular power, rarely found in man, he was capable of sustaining the hardships incident to the settlement of a new country, with a mind uncultivated, yet uncommonly bold and vigorous, and a memory tenacious of every impression, he seemed formed by nature, for one of those men who make the first settlement in the wilds of our country."
The brief ceremony concluded with a group response: "History tells us that what is needed today is not a show of greatness and a parade of power but a dedication to great ideals and high endeavor."
It was read -- in unison -- by descendants of Robert Moore and Jacob Houser, men who, although they did not get along with each other, exhibited those qualities the quotation extolled.
"We didn't think this day would ever happen," Elgan said. "Now it's here. It's wonderful."
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