Jeff Moore (pioneer)

Jeff Moore (March 22, 1780 – September 22, 1835) was an American pioneer and founder of the town of Russell, Ky. While his pioneering was relatively late in the settlement of the Ohio River Valley area his life exploits make him a memorable if not particularly well known character in the history of the region.

Aside from his birthdate of March 22, 1780 little else is known for fact about his birth and early life. He probably grew up somewhere in the central Pennsylvania farm lands. Known to have been a lifelong illiterate Moore claimed to have heard "wild tales" about the lands to the west he bought a Kentucky Long Rifle and left for what he called his "adventures" sometime in the late 1790s.

After fighting for over a decade in the still ongoing Indian Wars where he claimed to have killed "at least Three Hundred Red-Skins" later retorting "and I counted women as a half, kids only a third and hell-babies was just sport.". Moore decided to settle down. Finding the Northern Kentucky area to his liking he tried various towns and over a period of five years was run out of nearly fifteen communities over incidents attributed to his hard drinking and extreme, even for the time, Racism.

In early 1823 while traveling through the area that is now Russell, Moore decided upon seeing the area's unique hilly features, that a town built here could be easily fortified and defended against what was his near constant and lifelong fear; "Injun Attack". Over the next few months Moore built a large cabin on the highest hill in the area and declared this to be the center of his new town which he subsequently christened Russell-to honor a man he once mistakenly killed in a dispute over "Shine". After these preparations Moore returned East and gathered what family he could find to return with him and convinced all others possible to join through what was referred to later as a series of "lies, subterfuge and just plain untruths" about his new community.

Moore eventually returned to his new community in late Spring of 1824 with a group of nearly seventy settlers who with their hard work built Russell into the thriving community it is today. Moore remained in Russell for the rest of his life where he became a valued member of and leader to the town he founded.

Moore died September 22, 1835 after spending five days drifting between a delirious and near comatose state resulting from a severe head injury received September 17. The most widely accepted explanation of his receiving this injury comes from The Annals of Northern Kentucky 1800–1850: A Concise Yet Incomplete History

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