William Moore

William Moore (1827–1897) was a city and county surveyor in Los Angeles County, California, United States, and a member of the Los Angeles Common Council, the city's governing body, in the 19th century.

Personal Moore was born April 3, 1827, in Augusta, Maine, where his families were farmers and linen weavers. He learned the carriage-making trade, and by age 21 was making carriages, buggies and sleighs in Lewiston Falls, Maine.

On July 4, 1852, he sailed from New York for California and spent eighteen months in the mining and lumber regions near Napa. He walked from Northern California to Los Angeles, arriving on his 27th birthday in 1854.

He was known as "A man of wit and humor, with quaint expressions... both a scholar and linguist who could converse with the old timers of the City in Spanish or in many other tongues."

At the beginning of the Civil War, Moore

was appointed Captain of a company of California infantry, and later organized and drilled a military unit which became a home guard unit. Both Captain and Mrs. Moore were prominent factors in the early social life of Los Angeles. "Captain Willie's Company" of home guards served as, a famous old time social and recreational organization in the early days.

Legacy Moore's papers, daily diaries, field books, correspondence, notes and drawings are kept at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, the gift of Florence Moore Kreider in 1935, 1938 and 1946.