John A. Moore and John W. Chapman Annals of Newberry, by John A. Chapman, page 596-97 These two gentlemen were both natives of Newberry; both read law, and both left the county to practice their profession. Mr. Moore went to Columbia, the other to Kingstree, Williamsburg County. They married sisters, Miss Sarah Arthur and Miss Amanda Arthur, sisters of Edward J. Arthur, Esq. John W. Chapman left a widow, Mrs. Amanda Chapman, (who once taught the Hartford School,) but no children. She now lives with her nephews, the Killians, about twelve miles above Columbia. Mrs. Moore lives in Columbia, at the place, I believe, where her husband died. Two children live with her, one son and one daughter, Annie, who was a lovely girl and woman, but I have not seen her in a long tIme. She, too, once taught school in this county, at or near Mr. Cleland's, not far from Silver Street. Mr. Moore lived at Newberry Village in his boyhood, and he once told me a story on himself in connection with the Quaker meeting House on Bush River. That house, as perhaps my readers well know, had the reputation of being a haunted spot; but why, it would be hard to say, as the peopIe, who worshiped there in old days, were certainty a good, quiet folk. But whether haunted or not it had the reputation and that answered every purpose. Mr. Moore said that one Saturday afternoon, having holiday, he thought he would take his gun and walk down to Bush River hunting. The road passed right by the House, which was deeply embosomed in woods. The spot was lonely and he was alone. When he came near the house, looking up he saw high up in a tree, in the edge of the woods, a large owl with its white breast directly towards him. He raised his gun and fired, and the owl, instead of flying off or falling directly down to the earth, came sailing in a straight line towards him. All at once it flashed across his mind that there was something eerie in its performance; that it might be one of the ghosts haunting the place, and he broke and ran towards Newberry for dear life. He ran some two hundred yards or so and finding that nothing caught him he thought he would stop and investigate. He returned to his former standpoint and found the poor owl lying on the ground near where he was standing when be fired, crippled but not dead. He said he picked it up and returned home and hunted no more that day. Mr. Moore was a good lawyer, a prosperous and energetic man. His eldest son, Arthur, married and settled in Columbia; he was a lawyer, but he too is dead - died a few years ago. Many of the older citizens of Newberry, no doubt, still remember Mrs. Esther Moore, the mother of John A. Moore. Her neat, quick, bird-like ways were very pleasant. My acquaintance with her was very limited, but I knew her well by sight, and it always gave me pleasure to meet her. Dear Reader, it is a pleasure, but of a mournful kind, to recall the past and jot down recollections of persons and events long gone. But can an old man, whose active life is over, find better employment than this? There is one danger attending it and that is that the Recorder of past events loses, by degrees, active interest in the present, and comes at last to regard passing events and persons as matters giving work, and only this, for the pen of the future historian.