Idera (or Ida) Moberly, born 1862, Hendricks Co , Indiana, died Jan. 22, 1917 and is buried in Woodland Cemetery. She was married to Edward L. Long in 1882. They had two children. (She became badly crippled with arthritis)

The Woodland Cemetery was adjacent to the Woodland Rural School, both of which are no longer in existence, on old highway 10, about half-way between Liberty and Excelsior Springs in Clay Co. Missouri

My father, Benjamin Franklin Moberly, said the family came to Clay Co when he was six years old, which would have been about 1873.

I wish I knew more about my grandparents, Benjamin Newton Moberly and Mary Jane Simpson. I know that Benjamin Newton was born near Richmond, Madison County Kentucky, and that his father whose name I do not know, had a plantation, and raised tobacco and probably other things, and had slaves. I have always though that Mary Jane Simpson was also from the same vicinity, but since they were apparently married in Indiana, she possibly might have been born there. I am sorry that I didn't ask my aunts about the family background. My father died when I was 17, and as he was only six when he same to Missouri, he didn't remember much about the family baekground. Since my grandfather died when I was 3 yrs. & 4 Mo old, I have only a hazy memory of him. He lived with my father and I am told that he devoted himself to entertaining me when I was an infant and had me talking by the age of 9 months. I have always been told that he was a very good gentle man. He helped my father look after my half-brother and half-sister after the death of their mother, until my father's marriage to my mother in 1897. He evidently had many folk stories and songs from the Cumberland mountains. I remember that my father used to repeat some of the folk tales (and I later found some of the same tales in a book when I visited in Kentucky on a tour, in Louisville, Lexington, and that area.. My father also used to sing the plaintive folk song, "Barbara Allen". I am sure you have heard it. I wish I could remember the words. I remember the intonations my father gave to it. I don't remember that I ever heard my father sing anything else. My grandfather taught my father and my brother how to cure hams, Kentucky style, and my brother passed the art along to my nephew, Frank Moberly.

As mentioned previously, my grandfather was raised on a plantation, and told my brother and sister about his black Mammy. As a youug boy, my grandfather was given a negro boy about his age, a son of Mammy, to be his personal boy and playmate, and they had some wild times riding about the contryside and getting into mischief, for which they were soundly thrashed by Mammy. On one occasion, after some particular misdeeds, they were told they could not leave the plantation, were warned not to go over the fence, but grandfather said they had not been told not to crawl under it, which they proceeded to do, and of, course ware caught and punished.

My grandmother, Mary Jane Simpson, had a father who was quite a character. One day he was walking past the balcony, on which his wife was watering her flowers, and yelled "fire", she of source asking where, and he said "in my pipe, madam", whereupon she said, "I will put the fire out", and emptied a bucket of water on him. He had an impediment in his speech, and Aunt Ellen's son had also.