{"id":507,"featured":0,"modified":"2026-04-17 19:48:36","latitude":38.3212582999999966659743222407996654510498046875,"longitude":-85.751391299999994544123183004558086395263671875,"title":"Belle Moore","subtitle":"A Child Wronged in 19th Century America","fullsize":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/6adce237c625115aba8d6fa455bed2db.jpg","address":"3140 US-31, Jeffersonville, IN 47130","all_locations":[],"zoom":8,"creator":["Jeffersonville Township Public Library"],"description":"Belle Moore is an example of the incomplete, often contradictory evidence available about orphan’s lives. Born in 1867, Belle may have been surrendered sometime around 1875 by her biological mother, Sallie Crum Moore, a Jeffersonville native, due to the death of her father, William Moore. Her mother eventually remarried, this time to German immigrant Louis Ulrich, but the newlyweds didn’t rush to reclaim Belle. Most of Belle Moore's history comes from sensational newspaper accounts of her “scandalous” misadventures from 1883 to 1885.
According to Louisville's Courier-Journal of November 6 and 9, 1883, Frankfort, Kentucky, area farmer Milton Craig \"adopted\" Moore as a live-in nanny for his children. When Craig and his wife had business away from the farm, a neighbor, Marcus Cromwell, raped Moore, leaving her pregnant. Cromwell denied the assault. He defended himself to reporters by asserting that the 13 year-old girl was a “seductress” and portraying himself as a respectable father and grandfather. Craig indicated his support for Moore's story. The Courier-Journal bemoaned the fact that Cromwell faced no charges because Kentucky had no law against \"seducing\" an unmarried girl. In fact, for many purposes, the law considered poor teenagers like Moore an adult, but offered them few protections.
Soon after, Moore reported that the Craig family physically abused her. Moore fled to Jeffersonville to find her mother when the assaults became unbearable. Within a few weeks, Moore was arrested for antics outside her stepfather’s house, including dressing in boy’s clothing and drawing a crowd of spectators. Family members claimed she had been keeping them awake with singing and dancing, and threatened her stepfather’s life. Moore’s family called for an “inquest” or hearing into her sanity.
These inquests judged adults’ mental health. A finding of “insane” could result in the subject’s confinement to a state hospital. Moore, however, avoided confinement, and walked free after the inquest. The November 21, 1883 Courier-Journal reported that Jeffersonville authorities blamed Moore’s behavior on the effects of “the outrage committed upon her” at such a young age, the only official recognition given to the rape or to her vulnerable age. The papers did not record the outcome of her pregnancy.
In March 1885 she was again arrested for dressing in male clothing. She spent at least one night in jail, but the judge released her after a lecture on morals. Within a week, she was arrested again “cursing and raving like a rum maniac.” This time, a Courier-Journal reporter called her an “outcast,” a “male impersonator” and a “hard-case” who “undoubtedly wants to go to the work-house.”
We don't know today whether Belle identified as male, whether she dressed in male clothing to provide safety from assault, or whether the clothes were merely those she felt most comfortable in. What we do know is that Belle's arrests demonstrate the struggles orphans could face with their families, neighbors, and local law enforcement.","sponsor":null,"accessinfo":"","lede":"","website":"","related_resources":[],"factoids":[],"files":{"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/6adce237c625115aba8d6fa455bed2db.jpg":{"id":2377,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Ulrich Homesite","description":"The Louisville Courier-Journal of March 22, 1885, a history of Belle Moore, records that Belle Moore fled to 620 Indiana Avenue, where once stood the home of her mother and stepfather, Sallie and Louis Ulrich. The report does not mention the physical and sexual abuse that caused Moore’s flight, despite earlier articles detailing those events. Instead, the article portrays her as a scandalous, dangerous beauty, an archetypal fallen woman. | Jeffersonville Township Public Library | 2020 | Jen Weidner","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/6adce237c625115aba8d6fa455bed2db.jpg"},"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/3561cf450d57b397a78475cd5a8ffaa2.jpg":{"id":2380,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Final Mentions","description":"Belle Moore's ultimate fate has never been discovered, but this article hints at her fate. After all of the scandals that marked her adolescence, a reporter finds her living in crowded conditions with African American women and children, seeking shelter from one of the Ohio River’s frequent floods. Despite her ragged clothing, the reporter sees fit to remark upon her beauty. | Jeffersonville Township Public Library | 1885 | Louisville Courier-Journal","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/3561cf450d57b397a78475cd5a8ffaa2.jpg"},"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/3471a34476c5401393000ba0d1cb7e8e.jpg":{"id":2381,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Temporary Refuge","description":"The Louisville Courier-Journal describes how police found teenaged Belle Moore, delirious with pneumonia, sleeping in an abandoned engine house located near this site. The article notes that Moore's parents had turned her out due to her conduct, and she had gone days without food after losing both her home and place of employment. This home at the corner of Chestnut and Mechanic in Jeffersonville is near the site of the old pump house. | Jeffersonville Township Public Library | 2020 | Jen Weidner","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/3471a34476c5401393000ba0d1cb7e8e.jpg"},"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/b1f471b58ef25c9556780aa2b64ecc60.jpg":{"id":3102,"mime-type":"image/png","title":"Home Destroyed","description":"In 1890, 10 years after the original orphanage closed, the Great Tornado of 1890 destroyed the building. However, as a probable early resident of the Orphans’ Home, this is the building where Belle Moore’s tragedy began. | Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Image source: https://www.loc.gov/item/2018649107/. | 1890","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/b1f471b58ef25c9556780aa2b64ecc60.jpg"},"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/9f72340dfeaa18d0252dc313bc87006a.jpg":{"id":3103,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Rose Hill","description":"Pictured: Rose Hill School students in a clipping from Jeffersonville's Evening News, August 27, 1875. At Rose Hill, Belle Moore worked as a janitor for a short time after her parents threw her out for wearing men's clothing and keeping the neighborhood awake all night with her singing. This was around 1884, when Moore was about 14 years old. | Jeffersonville Township Public Library | 1875 | The Evening News","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/9f72340dfeaa18d0252dc313bc87006a.jpg"}}}