While writing about the Neches Bottom and Jack Gore Baygall Unit a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I did not know who Jack Gore was, and asked anyone who did know to tell me. One reader (aka my dad) emailed me to give the answer to this dilemma!
The answer appears in a throwaway line from the article "The Big Thicket Is a Critical Year Away From Preservation"by John M. Crewdson, which appeared in the New York Times on April 4, 1977. Crewdson gives a summary of the preserve's history and ecological diversity, along with detailing the fight of Big Thicket advocates to receive money and support from the federal government to create the preserve. The answer to my question appears in the middle of the article:
One recent morning [Edward C. Fritz] led an expedition into an area of the preserve known as the Jack Gore Baygall, a name derived, in part, from the varieties of sweet bay and gallberry holly found there... Then, almost as if an invisible line had been crossed, there was the Baygall named for Jack Gore, a deserter from the Texas Coast Guard during the Civil War who eluded his pursuers in the eastern end of the Big Thicket, a swampy, tangled haven for countless renegades, outlaws and runaway slaves.
Mystery solved! But it's unclear where Crewdson heard this story, although Fritz may have mentioned this as they entered the unit. A Gore family still lives in the area but I have found no mention of how they think of this relative. Solving this mystery has generated more questions. Such is the life of a researcher!