(TO VIEW ENLARGEMENTS AND SLOW DOWN THE FLASH ON THE PICTURES ABOVE - CLICK ON ANY ONE
OF THEM)

Eliza Jane Gore, born 1847 in Okalona, Tennessee, was the grandmother of my father,
John Roy Williams, born 1907 in Oklahoma.  She was the daughter of William Carroll
"Tipton" and Cherokee Jane Gore.  William Carroll Gore was the son of Henry Gore who
married a Carmack?  Henry Gore served in the War of 1812 and he is buried in the
Carmack Cemetery at Okalona, TN.  All the early Gores who lived in Jackson, Livingston
and Overton Counties, Tennessee, were related.  The Tennessee Gores came into Tennessee
from New Market, Shenandoah County, Virginia.  We descend from the same line as Senator
Albert Gore Sr. and V. P. Albert "Al" Gore Jr.  We are proud of our famous cousins but
we are proud of them all.  

The early Gores in Tennessee, prior to the Civil War, took advantage of their natural
environment making their money by ferrying log rafts up the Cumberland River to the
Ohio River and down the Mississippi to the shipbuilding port of New Orleans.  They
sold the logs and traveled back up the Natchez Trace through Mississippi & Alabama, by
foot or on horse, to return home again.  However, it seems that William Carroll Gore,
the son of Henry, did not engage in the logging business but was a hunter and trapper
selling his pelts and goods at Fort Massac, Illinois, the nearest large
military fort up the Cumberland located on the Ohio River.  After leaving Tennessee and
settling in Missouri, he lived among and near the Deleware Town and the Swan Trading
Post in southwest Missouri in between Springfield and the Arkansas border.  There he
also continued trapping, hunting and trading pelts to be sold to St. Louis.

Although we do not know the surnames or Native American names of either of William
Carroll "Tipton" Gores Cherokee wives, Jane or Nancy, we do have enough proof that they
were, indeed, Cherokee.  Research has revealed that a Cherokee Village was not more
than 200 yards from where Henry Gore raised his family there in Okalona and my great
grandmother, Eliza Jane Gore, told my aunt, Hulda Williams, from the time she was a
young child that she was a Cherokee from Tennessee.  Hulda made an affidavit to this
statement.  As well, a pamphlet in the rare book section of the Springfield Missouri
Library also reveals this Cherokee blood line.

William Carroll "Tipton" Gore and Jane and their children, including Eliza Jane, were
on the 1850 Census at Fort Massac in Massac County, Illinois.  Jane, apparently, died
on this trip and her burial place is unknown.  William returned to Okalona and
remarried to Cherokee Nancy "Granny" Gore, the suspected sister of Jane.  By the 1860
Census, William and his new wife, Nancy, and his children by Jane, including Eliza
Jane, were on the Carrol County, Arkansas Census where Nancy's first child was born. 
From there, the family moved into southwest Missouri to the confluence of the White and
James Rivers in Stone County where William became acquainted with the William Gilliss
and Joseph Philiburt Families who maintained trading posts with the Delaware and
Painkeshaw Indians of that area as recorded by Senator Emory Melton in his book,
Delaware Town and the Swan Trading Post.

William Carroll and Nancy "Granny" Gore lived near Joseph Philibert at the confluence
of the White and James Rivers where they were buried in the Old Joseph Philibert
Cemetery there.  Several of their children lived at Owens Bend including Catherine
Paralee Gore who married into the Owens Family.  Unfortunately, the Corp of Engineers
would build and flood this area with the Table Rock Dam and Lake near Branson in the
1950's.  William and Granny Gores homesite lay under the flood waters while Owens Bend
was spared.  Traveling to Missouri, I researched and found that William Carroll and
Nancy had grave and relocation records and were re-interred at the New Philiburt
Cemetery at the end of the Branson Strip at Kimberling City across the street from the
Kimberling City Chamber of Commerce.  Not having much time, I had markers made for
their grave sites.  Just before our scheduled return, one of the Philiberts gave me the
name of Ella Gore Dotson.  I contacted her and we were, indeed, related.  For twenty
years we became faithful cousins.

DEDICATION:  
This site is dedicated to Ella Gore Dotson - a great lady who at the early age of about
four became orphaned but dedicated her life to the remembrance of her past ancestors
and the kind attention to her living kin, as well.

Ella was the daughter of James and Alice White Gore who resided in 1910 at the James
Township in Stone County, Missouri with their first son, Carol aka Carl Gore who was
three years old on that Census.  James named his son, Carol, after his father, William
Carol "Tipton" Gore.  On the 1920 Washington, Stone County, Missouri Census we find in
the household 89/92 of David A and Sarah J. Hardin with the following children:  Carol
Gore, 13 years old and Ella Gore, 8 years old; both are noted as "Orphan" children. 
Their ages were switched but we know from the picture Ella had of her and her brother
with guardians that she was the younger of the two.  She is holding the doll her father
had given her before he died and there's no mistaking that her brother was older. 
Carol and Ella's mother, Alice, no doubt, died at childbirth.  Ella lived to be over 90
years old.    

Ella and I ran those Ozark Mountains to the places where our early Gores had lived. 
What fun we had!

                    W H O   A R E   T H E S E   G O R E S   ?  ?  ?

JAMES L. GORE