The Disappearance of Charles Clark Moor

My great-great-grandfather has been missing for over a hundred years…

Last week, watching wave roll into wave onto the shores of Lake Michigan, I held his face in my hands.

I touched the singing sands of the beach—glistening with quartz—and heard a distance whisper in my blood.

There are two stories of what happened to Charles Moor:

The one that I remember being told was that he had abandoned his young wife Missouri Ann and infant son Herbert and started a new life. I heard about other people with the last name Moor in the Chicago area—the unique spelling a possible clue that Charles, irresponsibly and selfishly, packed up and vanished, craving the freedom of fresh start. The family believed that the spelling of Moor was so unique that it would be rare to find others close to where our own relatives settled. But, the spelling is not so uncommon, and Charles’ reputation suffered as a result.

The other story is that Charles died in a shipping accident on Lake Michigan—that formidable old lake with fathoms full of the bones of thousands of ships and crews. The lore is rich with gales smashing ships ashore or encrusting them with ice. The “Lake Michigan Triangle” described as wilder and more voracious than the famed Bermuda Triangle itself. Carved from a glacier millennia ago, this breathing fossil takes primordial glee in digesting modern man and his marvels.

My great grandfather Herbert Clark Moor was born in Chicago, eventually to be raised by his uncle. So little is known of Missouri Ann Durst Moor, his mother. Born in 1853 in Xenia, Ohio of Prussian parents, how did she end up in Chicago, only to return to Ohio a few years later? The death of her husband? Did she lie to her family about a “shipping accident,” ashamed and scandalized by a philandering Charles?

Back then, who could verify such a thing? Shipping accidents on Lake Michigan were common enough to absolve a young woman of the taint of a husband who no longer wanted her. Missouri Ann would remarry. This is all I know of my great-great grandmother.

Herbert Clark Moor, her son, would go to father thirteen children and enjoy a long marriage to Bertha Gertrude Spoores. Eleven years his junior, Bertha would outlive him by 26 years. She died the year before I was born. Herbert was a handsome man who would father handsome sons and daughters—only one daughter remains now, the last of many siblings, the lone keeper of her family’s undocumented history.

There are no pictures of Charles. I do not know his birthdate or deathdate. I doubt I would care much about him, if I hadn’t moved to Michigan City, Indiana…

Here, Lake Michigan nearly subsumes the city, flooding almost every aspect of the culture. We are awash in beach references, dune motifs, and a skyline that boasts the very lighthouse my great-great grandfather might’ve failed to see on his final voyage across the lake.

A shipping accident.

I sat on the beach and watched Lake Michigan rush the shore. The grains of sand in my hands felt moist and warm like flesh. I poked my finger into the mud and fashioned a face—foreign, yet recognizable.

I am the unknowing prodigal.

What drew me to this place? If my life was a narrative, the reasons would be obvious. Of all places, how is it that I came to live near Chicago, the birthplace of my great-grandfather, the deathplace of my great-great grandfather, a place infused with the watery grave that sucked away his life, washing away his memory, his own story?

Yes, I wanted to leave Iowa, the reasons buried deep in the pockets of my own personal history and mystery. Yes, it was close to my family in Ohio. As the only living child of my parents, I felt the need to life closer, a day’s drive.

Did Herbert ever wonder about his father? Did he wonder about the people whose name is spelled like ours living so near his birthplace? What would he tell me about his father, if he’d even speak of him at all?

All I know is whenever I look out at the frothing tides of Lake Michigan, I think of Charles Clark Moor and the stories of I’ve read about the thousands of shipwrecks. Was it the Atalanta? The Joe Barber? What about the Challenge? I search the databases and wonder about my great-great grandfather and his fate. Which ship is the one I should memorize and study?

I cannot swim.

Water is a fascination to me. I love to float and bob. Even though I never learned to swim, I have always wanted to own a swimming pool. The water’s embrace brings comfort.

Perhaps I returned to the shores of Lake Michigan because of a need in my blood, a song sung in the overlapping weave of my DNA. The gulls cry, and I turn to beckon a friend.

Charles Clark Moor has been gone for decades. His story mostly lost to family lore. Yet, here I stand, on the shores where he once walked, listening to the quiet stories of the very lake that claimed his life. Someday, perhaps, I will recognize his footprints in the sand and know that I have touched a piece of home.