William Robert Moore

At 79 years old, William Robert Moore physical status not available right now. We will update William Robert Moore's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Forced to leave school at age 12, Moore went to work as a farm hand. He worked barefoot in the fields for $24 a year with room and board. When the year was over he had saved $12. At the age of fifteen, Moore became a clerk in a dry-goods store in Beech Grove. He was also a clerk in Nashville, Tennessee. He engaged in the wholesale dry-goods business in New York City as a salesman 1856–1859. He married Charlotte Blood, on February 14, 1878. He moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1859, when he was less than 30 years old, and organized a wholesale dry-goods store, Wm. R. Moore, Inc. Today, this building is listed on the "National Register of Historic Places".

When residing in Memphis, Moore was regarded as the city's "most insulted resident." Opposing secession in the Southern state of Tennessee and also staunchly supporting Republican President Abraham Lincoln, a historian noted:

During the American Civil War, Moore maintained a low profile and made clever business decisions. Correctly predicting that money in the Confederacy would become of little worth in the likely circumstance that the South lost, he spent his money on downtown property rather than save it. Following the war, when the Union emerged victorious, Moore became a wealthy landowner while rival businessmen faced bankruptcy.

During the yellow fever epidemic of 1879, Moore was among the first to promote a committee on sanitation in Memphis that would improve the city's drinking water system. As a result, breeding grounds for mosquito activities, which caused the plague, were eliminated.

Moore was elected as a Republican to represent Tennessee's 10th District in the Forty-seventh Congress, serving from March 4, 1881, to March 3, 1883. He declined to accept a renomination in 1882, and resumed his business activities.

During his two years in Congress, Moore held a mostly conservative voting record, with the DW-NOMINATE system giving him a score of 0.456 on the first dimension. He was also considered more conservative than 90% of all House members during the congressional session, in addition to being more conservative than 81% of Republicans overall.

Moore declined to run for re-election in the 1882 midterms, instead retiring from the House after one term. He was succeeded by Young.

Little substantial information is known about Moore's short congressional tenure, though he notably was one of seven House Republicans (along with Benjamin F. Marsh, George W. Steele, John R. Thomas, Orlando Hubbs, James S. Robinson, and Robert Smalls) to vote against the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in the lame duck session preceding the 48th Congress.

The Pendleton Act replaced the traditional spoils system with a civil service system, and was favored by Democrats led by George H. Pendleton who resented Republican usage of patronage to benefit blacks. Civil service reform was opposed during the late 1870s by conservative Stalwarts, most of whom ultimately caved into voting for the Pendleton Act following the assassination of James A. Garfield by the mentally ill Charles J. Guiteau.

He served as member of the Tennessee state House of Representatives from 1889 to 1891.

On December 9, 1891, Moore gave a tribute to the late president William McKinley, who had been assassinated.

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