Mary Evelyn (Mollie) Moore Davis, the gifted Southern novelist and poet, was born in Alabama on April 12, 1852. Her father was Dr. John Moore, a physician of note and a cultivated gentleman of the old school. Her mother was originally Miss Marion Crutchfield of Virginia from whom she inherited a taste for poetry. Dr. and Mrs. Moore moved to Texas in 1858 and settled near Tyler at the beautiful country seat "Sylvan Dell" which Mollie has immortalized in her writings. Here at the age of nine years she began to write verse. Her earliest efforts being published in the old Tyler Reporter. She was carefully educated in the schools of Tyler and graduated early with honor.
When the war started in 1861, Mollie's two older brothers, Thomas O. Moore and Hartwell Moore, enlisted in the Confederate army - the first named in the Seventh Texas Infantry and the second in the First Texas Infantry of Hood's Brigade. Both served until the surrender. Legendary reports are that Mollie stood on the steps of the courthouse and, when the men started to war, presented a handmade flag to Company K of the Third Texas Cavalry.
The published poems, sketches and short stories by Mollie Moore attracted wide notice. Her first published work was a poem, "Minding the Gap," which was about an old East Texas farm custom of letting down the bars of the fence at a gap to permit wagons to pass at harvest time. It is dated 1863 and was no doubt written during the War Between the States. In 1867 this poem along with others Mollie had written were published in a book, Minding the Gap and Other Poems.
In 1874 Miss Moore married Major Thomas E. Davis of Virginia. In 1880 the couple moved to New Orleans where he became the editor-in-chief of the New Orleans Picayune. Mollie continued writing until the time of her death.
Mollie died on New Year's Day, 1909, and was buried the following Saturday in Metairie, Louisiana. The Reverend A. R. Edbrooke of Grace Church of which she was a member performed the last rites. Of her funeral cortege, a lady romantically said, "She looked like the Lady of Shalott floating down the river in her funeral barge."
Mollie Moore Davis 217 United Daughters of the Confederacy® of Tyler, Texas, is named in her honor.
