MOORE, IKE HENRY (1909-1945). Ike Henry Moore, a student of local history specializing in early Texas newspapers, was born in San Antonio on September 14, 1909, to Isaac Henry and Sallie (Jefferson) Moore; the family moved to Uvalde when Moore was still a young child. He graduated in 1927 from Uvalde High School and started the same year to study English at the University of Texas, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Delta Chi, a journalism fraternity. He graduated with honors in 1932. He married Elizabeth Knight, and the couple had one son. Moore was an active member of the Texas State Historical Association. He next pursued graduate work in history and was a part-time instructor for the UT department of history in 1934-35. As a graduate student he compiled The Life and Diary of Reading W. Black: A History of Early Uvalde (1934) and, in conjunction with research for his doctorate, which he never completed, published "The Earliest Printing and First Newspaper in Texas" in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly (October 1935) and "Early Texas Newspapers, 1813-1846" in the Texas Almanac (1936). In 1936 he joined the nascent WPA as assistant to James Francis Davis, then supervisor of the Federal Writers' Project in Texas. Later that year the project was split, and Moore became state supervisor for the new Texas Historical Records Survey. Between 1939 and 1943 he served as the first director of the San Jacinto Museum of History and wrote the foreword for its initial publication, A Checklist of Texas Newspapers, 1813-1939 (1941), an index produced by the Historical Records Survey. Moore's tenure at the museum was abbreviated, however, by his enlistment in the United States Navy, probably in 1943. He followed his military training at Corpus Christi with a brief stint in the Naval District's Educational Service Office. He was commissioned a lieutenant (junior grade) in the Naval Reserve and trained at the Naval Officers Training School in Hollywood, Florida, and then at the Naval Communication School at Harvard University. In December 1944 he was assigned to an escort vessel under Adm. William F. Halsey. Five months later Moore was serving as a communications officer in the Pacific aboard an escort carrier when he lost his life in a Japanese kamikaze attack. A military honor funeral was held at sea in May 1945. Moore was survived by one son.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Texas Collection, July 1945. Uvalde Leader-News, May 31, 1946. Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

John J. Buder

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "MOORE, IKE HENRY," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/MM/fmoas.html (accessed April 20, 2005).