This collection is made up of 6 letters that Davis Graham Moore wrote to his son Allen in the late 19th century. He sent 5 letters to Allen, then a student at the University of Vermont, from October 31, 1882-January 26, 1884. He discussed aspects of Allen's collegiate life and activities, such as an altercation between members of different classes, his academic performance, and his involvement in a fraternity. He reminisced briefly about his own time at the university. Some of the letters pertain to Moore's work for the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway, particularly regarding the shipment of cotton, and to the flooding of the Wabash and Ohio Rivers in February 1883. His letter of January 26, 1884, mentions Allen's eponymous uncle, who had just received a Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig. Moore's final letter to his son, dated at Chicago, Illinois, on November 23, 1893, largely concerns the World's Columbian Exposition, including Moore's positive impression of the General Electric Company's displays and the vast numbers of visitors on "Chicago Day."
Davis Graham Moore was born in Keeseville, New York, on December 15, 1834, the son of Asa Davis Moore (1800-1872) and Mindia Campbell (1801-1884). After graduating from the University of Vermont in 1858, he became principal of Rutland High School, and, in 1865, he moved to Illinois. Moore was a railroad paymaster in Springfield in 1870 and spent most of the rest of his life in Danville; in the early 1880s, he worked for the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway in Cairo. Moore married Martha Jane Hudson, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, in 1864, and they had four children: Allen Henry (b. 1865), George D., Olie M., and Emily Lucy. Davis G. Moore died on September 13, 1919.
Allen Henry Moore attended the University of Vermont from 1882-1884 and graduated from the Rose Polytechnic Institute in 1888. After working for the Thomson-Houston Electric Company for several years, he became manager at the Union Elektricitates Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany, in 1892, and manager of the British branch of the Thomson-Houston Company in Rugby, England, in 1899. He returned to the United States and lived in Syracuse and Albany, New York. He and his wife Mabel had four children.
