Moran Family Papers

The Moran family was an early non-native settler of the Silver Creek, Madison, Kentucky area when John Cleveland Moran (1763-1835) and Elizabeth (Betsey) Ann Barnett (1765-1835), along with Barnett’s family members, emigrated to the area from Virginia in the late 1700s. J.C. Moran and Elizabeth Barnett moved to the area with Elizabeth’s mother, Mary Montgomery Barnett (who already had family in Kentucky), and some of Elizabeth’s siblings following the death of Elizabeth’s father Robert Barnett in 1787. The group brought millstones with them from Virginia. J.C. Moran and Elizabeth Barnett Moran were married in Madison County, KY, in September of 1789 and had ten children. Both J.C. Moran and Elizabeth Barnett Moran are buried at the James Barnett Cemetery (also known as the Silver Creek Cemetery) in Silver Creek. The Barnett Moran’s Mill, a water-powered grist mill, was established on Silver Creek. This mill may have burnt down as early as 1852. John and Elizabeth Moran’s sixth child, Nathan Montgomery Moran (1803-1874), married Mary Jane Anderson (1821-1877) in May of 1846. N.M. Moran, like his father, was a slave owner. At least two individuals enslaved by N.M. Moran went to Camp Nelson during the Civil War to fight for the Union. Nathan Moran established an estate and farm known as “Stonehedge” (for the wall surrounding the estate) or “Moran Castle” and raised horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and other animals on the expansive land. N.M. and Mary Jane Moran had one child, Hugh Anderson Moran (1849-1886). Hugh Anderson Moran attended Washington College (now Washington and Lee Universit) and traveled to Europe and the Middle East after graduating. H.A. Moran married Jane (Jennie) Todd Breck (the daughter of Presbyterian minister Robert Levi Breck) in 1878. H.A. Moran was active in Richmond area business affairs before dying in 1886 at the age of thirty-six of tuberculous. H.A. Moran left behind three surviving children: Nathan Montgomery Moran (1878-1952), Robert Breck Moran (1879-1961), and Hugh Anderson Moran (II) (1881-1977). In October of 1886, the entire “herds and flocks” of short-horn cattle, horses, Shropshire sheep, hogs and other animals of the Stonehedge farm were auctioned off. Later that month, Jennie Moran took her three children to California to join her father and a brother and to escape tuberculosis that had taken, in addition to her husband, the lives of two infant children. Hugh Anderson Moran (II), in addition to studying and traveling abroad during his childhood, would go on to attend Stanford University graduating in 1905 and was the first athlete (track) to receive the Rhodes Scholarship and first Rhodes Scholar from Stanford to study at Oxford.  Later earning a doctorate in religion from Columbia University and the Union Theological Seminary, Moran was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church in 1908. He went on to serve as a Secretary of the International Committee of the Y.M.C.A. in China from 1909 to 1913. From 1916 to 1918, Moran was stationed in Vladivostok, Russia, in charge of prisoner of war relief in Siberia; he also served as the special aide to Senator Elihu Root as part of the Special Diplomatic Mission in Russia in 1917. Moran then worked with the Cornell University Christian Association (CUCA) from 1917-1927 and the Cornell United Religious Works (CURW) from 1927-1942. He was also a published author of numerous books. Hugh Moran (II) married Irene May Hornby of California 1911 in Redlands, California. Hugh and Irene Moran had four children: Hugh Anderson III, Irene, Pauline and Jean.