In my office there is a wall with the faces and names of all the Maricopa County School Superintendents. From John T. Alsap to Steve Watson. One stands out because he served for a very short time – less than two months. J.A. Moore served from 1/1919 to 2/1919.
The prevailing rumor regarding his short tenure was that he was shot. I decided to do a little research.
I visited FamilySearch.org to get started. I also accessed records from Ancestry.com. FamilySearch is free, and Ancestry.com is free when I used my City of Phoenix Public Library Card.
As I was researching Moore and his family, I discovered that I am related to his wife Marguerite Blanche Calland. It turns out that my ninth great-grandfather and her sixth great-grandfather were brothers in Massachusetts born to William and Elizabeth Adams in the mid 1600s.
What follows is a brief life sketch of J.A. Moore, Maricopa County School Superintendent in 1919.
John Allen Moore was born May 8, 1875 in Ohio where he met and married his wife M. Blanche Calland on August 2, 1905.
A Presbyterian from Ohio, completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Wooster in 1900. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1903. He moved to Arizona where he worked as a Real Estate Agent and Accountant.
In Arizona, he and Blanche had two daughters; one born in 1909 and the other in 1911.
He ran successfully for the office of Maricopa County School Superintendent in 1918.
In September of 1918 his draft registration card described him as being short slender build with brown eyes and brown hair.
As the world is dealing with the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic a lot of people have been drawing comparisons to the 1918 Spanish flu. In January of 1919 Moore contracted influenza. A short time later, he died from pneumonia on February on 17, 1919.
In Scottdale, at the public school, “The flag at the school has been flying at half-mast ever since the news was received of the death of Superintendent J.A. Moore.”
In memoriam, the Maricopa County Real Estate board published in the local paper: “Mr. Moore was a fine principled and highly educated gentleman, and the work he performed for the Maricopa Realty board during the year 1918 was the greatest of help in being instrumental in establishing the Realty board. We will miss him, and extend our heartfelt sympathy to his wife and family.”
Blanche passed away in 1963.
Moore rests at Greenwood cemetery in Phoenix.
