On this day in Alabama history: Alabama suffrage leader was born

January 17, 1867

Born on this day as Frances Elizabeth Daughdrill, “Bessie” and her family left Demopolis in the late 1860s for Coal City, just east of the Coosa River in St. Clair County. Her father owned valuable mining property there. In 1885, Bessie married John Washington Moore, who had moved to St. Clair County as a youth with his family. In 1914, while serving as president of the Coal City Equal Suffrage Association, Bessie represented Coal City at the second Alabama Convention of the Alabama Equal Suffrage Association. While not famous in the national suffrage movement, she contributed greatly to the cause in Alabama and to the growth of Coal City.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Bessie Moore was one of the founders of the Broken Arrow Baptist Church. (Photograph by W.D. Hosey, Dec. 17, 2006, findagrave.com)

Bessie and John Moore are buried at the Broken Arrow Baptist Church Cemetery. (Photograph by Dennis Ison, Sept. 10, 2004, findagrave.com)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.