Friday's Faces from the Past: Thomas Gurth Moore & Katherine May "Katie" Sprouse Moore Mayhew, ABT 1927

This is Breathless' maternal uncle and aunt, Thomas Gurth Moore (1902-1935) and Katherine "Katie" May Sprouse Moore Mayhew (1908-2005), taken around the time they married in 1927.

Gurth, as he was always known, was born March 20, 1902, in a dugout in Indiahoma, Oklahoma, the oldest child of Tandy Clayton Moore (1878-1964) and Nancy Flora "Nannie" Jones (1882-1969).  Gurth grew up in Texas, though, and didn't care much for Oklahoma when his parents moved there in late 1918.

In the fall of 1920, Gurth moved to Fort Worth, where he lived with the family of his maternal aunt Dorinda Jones Drosihn.  He and his cousin Sam Drosihn attended Draughon‘s Business College, graduating in June 1922.  They both worked in the kitchen of a Fort Worth hotel, and in 1924, Gurth moved to Austin where he became the chef at the then-new Stephen F. Austin Hotel, earning $50 a week.  It was here that he met Katie, who worked in the laundry at the same hotel.  They married September 14, 1927, in Buda, Texas.

They had two sons, Thomas Clayton (born in 1933 in San Antonio, while Gurth briefly worked as the chef at the Plaza Hotel), and Julian Wesley (born in 1934 in Austin).  Sadly, Gurth contracted pneumonia and died the following year, on January 5, 1935, at only age 32.  He is buried at the Driftwood Cemetery in Driftwood, Texas.


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