Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 22, 1992 TAG: 9201220088
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THIS REPORT WAS GREATLY EXAGGERATED
It's been 87 years and four days since The Evening News reported on its front page the untimely and violent death of Henry Moore.Moore lived in Dillons Mill, Franklin County.
"It is said," wrote the Roanoke newspaper, "that young Moore was called out of his home Sunday night and he had hardly crossed the threshold before a volley was fired by a party and he fell to the ground dead and even after falling, volley after volley was fired before the crowd dispersed and when the family carried him to his room it was found that he had been shot 19 times."
Moonshiners were suspected.
The news was gathered not by fiber optic cable, telephone or automobile - none of which were readily available. It was plucked from the grapevine and confirmed by a visitor from Dillons Mill, near Burnt Chimney, who'd spoken to a farmer who lived close to the man who reared the now-lifeless Henry Moore.
It was a fourth-hand, but vivid, account of Henry's demise.
Days passed, and the flow of news began slowly to bury Henry's memory - as it will all of us someday:
Jan. 18: Luis Corea, the Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States, proves once and for all that he is pure white - no Indian or Negro blood - and is thus free to marry his sweetheart from Macon, Ga.
Jan. 19: A suspected bigamist is caught trying to saw the bars off his cell window in the Salem jail.
Jan. 20: Three men are shot to death in Calloway, Franklin County, over an insult to a woman - "all this not far from the place where Henry Moore was shot . . .," according to the Evening News.
Jan. 20: Booker T. Washington speaks to the Kansas Legislature.
Jan. 21: Martha Ashby, a 55-year-old farmer's wife from Parsons, W.Va., runs away to Pittsburgh with 19-year-old Arthur Faulkner.
Jan. 23: Edward Garst, a miller at the Gambill & Davis mill in Roanoke, finds a corn cob shaped like a human hand.
Jan. 24: Thomas Alva Edison is recuperating from an operation to remove an abcess from his ear.
Jan. 24: A Bedford, Ind., woman shoots an eagle she finds roosting in a tree, eyeing her chickens. Her marksmanship is hailed.
Feb. 2: From Roanoke court: "A Syrian who had struck a small boy went into an exhaustive and wholly unintelligible report on the affair, but the explanation was not sufficiently lucid to suit his honor, and the native of Syria contributed a 10-spot to the city exchequer."
Feb. 3: "President Roosevelt will be introduced next week to the father and mother of 27 children, and it is expected he will present them with an autographed photograph."
And finally, on that same Feb. 3, came startling news from Dillons Mill, beneath the screaming headline:
"HENRY MOORE WAS NOT SHOT"
Turns out that Henry Moore is at home with his minister, reading his newspaper - which arrives even later than it does now - when he learns of his own death.
Henry, writes The Evening News, would "like very much to know who it was that sent the report out, as Mr. Moore objects seriously to being shot to death by midnight assassins without his knowledge."