People and incidents · Tabernacle
Hosea Moore and Samuel Prickett
Documented 1838 conviction; earlier disappearance is family tradition
A later Burlington County family account accused Hosea Moore of causing Samuel Prickett’s disappearance; Moore was himself killed in 1838, and Clayton Cramer was convicted of second-degree murder.
The Prickett account
A family history based on a 1901 letter says Moore quarreled with Samuel Prickett, knocked him down, and confined him in a smokehouse. Prickett disappeared during the night. Years later, the account continues, Prickett’s son found human bones and his father’s pocketknife in woods some distance from Fox Chase.
This narrative was recorded decades after the alleged events. No contemporary complaint, inquest, court record, or positive identification of the bones has yet been found, so it should be treated as family tradition rather than a solved murder.
Moore’s death and Cramer’s trial
Moore died in 1838 after Clayton Cramer struck him with a heavy improvised hammer sometimes described as a squared-off bowling ball. Later accounts claimed Moore, who was said to be mentally unwell, may have encouraged Cramer to kill him. A three-day proceeding in Burlington County’s Court of Oyer and Terminer ended with Cramer acquitted of first-degree murder but convicted of second-degree murder. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment at hard labor; a family account says he was eventually pardoned.
Moore was buried in the Old Lumberton Cemetery. The reported weapon is said to survive in the possession of descendants, but that provenance has not been independently established.
Sources
Tabernacle Historical Society, “Tales of Murder and Mayhem”; Tabernacle Historical Society, “Fox Chase Tavern”; 1838 Burlington County Court of Oyer and Terminer record cited by the society; The Benjamin Moore Family of Burlington County, quoting Richard Haines’s March 10, 1901 letter to Howard Deacon. The differing evidentiary weight of the court record and family story is noted above.