MOORE, GEORGE FLEMING (1822–1883). George Fleming Moore, judge, was born in Elbert County, Georgia, on July 17, 1822, the son of William H. and Mary Garland (Marks) Moore. He attended the universities of Alabama and Virginia, began studying law in 1840, and was admitted to the bar in 1844. In 1846 he moved to Crockett, Texas, but by 1849 had returned to Alabama to marry Susan Spyker. They had seven children. Moore moved to Austin in 1854 and then to Nacogdoches in 1856. He was a member of a firm that furnished reporters for the Texas Supreme Court and published volumes twenty-two through twenty-four of Texas Reports (1860–61). During the Civil War he was colonel of the Seventeenth Regiment, Texas Cavalry. He became associate justice of the Texas Supreme Court in 1862. During this time he contributed to a Texas Supreme Court decision to uphold the right of the Confederate Congress to draft men into the army. He advanced to chief justice in August 1866 and served until 1867, when he was removed by federal military authority as an "impediment to Reconstruction." He practiced law in Austin until January 27, 1874, when Richard Coke reappointed him associate justice of the Supreme Court. Moore succeeded 0. M. Roberts as chief justice in 1878. He resigned on November 1, 1881, and died in Washington, D.C., on August 30, 1883. He was buried in Austin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Harbert Davenport, History of the Supreme Court of the State of Texas (Austin: Southern Law Book Publishers, 1917). Dictionary of American Biography. James D. Lynch, The Bench and Bar of Texas (St. Louis, 1885). Who Was Who in America, Historical Volume.