Chapter Two
Portraits, in words, of the men and women whose choices — to marry, to buy land, to donate for a church, to name a child — became the shape of this family.
1836 – 1901
Founder · Moore Station namesake
Born into slavery, Anderson lived into a freedom he helped build. With his wife Lucinda, he donated the land in 1876 that seated the community's first Methodist church and its first school — the two institutions that turned a settlement of freed families into a town with a name.
1848 – 1914
Founder · Matriarch of the Moore line
Co-founder of Moore Station's church and school. Lucinda's line carried forward through her daughter Annastine, who married Omega Cofer — joining the two founding families whose descendants gather today.
before emancipation –
Founder · Cofer patriarch
Recorded with his household in the 1870 census — the first federal census to list formerly enslaved people by name. Father of Omega Cofer, and one of the freedmen who moved from sharecropping into landownership around what became Moore Station.
19th century
Founder · Cofer matriarch
Wife of Addison Cofer and mother of Omega. Her surname appears in the record as both Larkin and Larken — a reminder that early African American genealogy is often reconstructed through variant spellings across census, church, and cemetery records.
1867 – 1960
Second generation · Bridge to the Moores
Son of Addison and Mary Jane. His marriage to Annastine M. Moore united the Cofer and Moore founding lines into one household — the household that would raise Gertrude.
1874 – 1937
Second generation · Daughter of the founders
Daughter of Anderson and Lucinda Moore. Wife of Omega Cofer. Mother of Gertrude. She stands at the exact place where the two founding families of Moore Station became one.
1900 – 1986
Third generation · The union
Granddaughter of both the Cofers and the Moores. Her marriage to Henry Evans in the early twentieth century joined the Evans family to the combined Cofer-Moore lineage — and became the direct line from which the eleven Evans children descended.
1899 – 1978
Third generation · Patriarch of the Evans line
Husband of Gertrude Cofer. Father of the eleven children whose names now branch across every reunion table. Buried, with Gertrude, at Bethel Cemetery in Moore Station.
Family tradition
Earliest Evans forebear
Family memory identifies John Evans as a traveling preacher — the earliest named ancestor in the Evans line. Beyond his name and his calling, the record grows thin; the work of finding him continues.
The Next Generation