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A member of one of the earliest families of Texas, William Folsom Moore (1868-1956) was born October 28, 1868 at Starksville, Lamar County, Texas. Both of his grandfathers were veterans of Indian wars under General Jackson, and one of them participated in the Battle of New Orleans. His parents were Captain W. E. Moore, C.S.A., and Elizabeth (Neal) Moore. The Mathias G. Neal family had come from Middle Tennessee in 1846 to settle on land in Lamar County ten miles southeast of Paris on Blossom Prairie. The Hardy Moore family came in 1856 from Florida to settle in Paris. Moore's father, Captain W. E. Moore, fought in the Civil War and was a member of the State Senate from Fannin and Lamar Counties in 1873. In 1871 Captain Moore built a home on the Neal property in Lamar County. The Texas State Historical Commission marker it bears states that Captain Moore was a member of the Texas Senate in 1874 when Carpetbagger rule was ended in Texas. Moore attended Washington and Lee University from 1880 to 1890 as a pre-law student, winning a Latin scholarship. He entered the Law School of the University of Texas in 1890, helped organize the school's first football team in 1891, and graduated second in his class in 1892. He was its first graduate to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The University of Texas law faculty then consisted of two professors, both former Supreme Court Justices, Governor Oran M. Roberts, the Old Alcalde, and the Honorable Robert S. Gould. It is likely that because of them the tradition prevailed for many years of addressing Law School professors as Judge. On December 17, 1896 he married Miss Mary Goodner, of McKinney, Texas, whose father, Thomas C. Goodner, had graduated from Cumberland University Law School in 1857 and came to Texas after the Civil War. They had four children including Hardy Moore who was his law partner from 1930 to the end of his life. From the first of the year 1893 until 1939 Moore practiced law in Paris, Texas. He was leading counsel for the proponents in the widely publicized contest of the will, which he had written, of Mr. William J. McDonald, who left the bulk of his fortune to the University of Texas for the establishment of an astronomical observatory. Mr. McDonald, who trained as a lawyer, practiced law for a number of years in Clarksville before entering banking. Moore's public service in this period was quite limited. From 1895-1897 Moore served in the Texas House. In 1912 Governor T. M. Campbell appointed him special Chief Justice of the Texarkana Court of Civil Appeals for one case. And in 1915 he served for six weeks as special district judge of Red River County. He also served as president of Lamar County Bar Association, and for many years was president of the Paris School Board. He was also active in various fraternal organizations including Beta Theta Pi, the Knights Templar, and the Masonic Lodge. In 1939 newly elected Attorney General Gerald C. Mann appointed Moore his First Assistant. On April 8, 1940, Chief Justice Cureton died, and the Governor W. Lee "Pappy" ("Please pass the biscuits, Pappy") O'Daniel had some trouble in appointing his successor. O'Daniel all too often had the political savvy of a sack of flour as Judge Mark Davidson (11th Dist. Court Houston) recounts:
O'Daniel said he would appoint the "best qualified person" so he appointed Eugene Locke, founder of Locke, Purnell. Locke was reading the Dallas Morning News the next morning and lo and behold, he read where he was appointed chief justice to the Texas Supreme Court. He telegraphed the governor saying: "Appreciate it, but I'm not interested." O'Daniel appointed someone else [Attorney General Gerald Mann] and he read about it in the San Antonio newspaper, and also declined. After that, all sorts of people started writing the governor saying: "Me! Me! Me!" One was a cowboy from Deaf Smith County who wrote: "I'm not a lawyer, but I can rope, and I can brand. An that sounds like good qualifications to be Chief Justice." O'Daniel ended up appointing W. F. Moore from Texarkana [Paris] who after a month decided he didn't want to run for the position. That lead to the open race that Alexander won. Moore, a pleasant, dignified, somewhat retiring man who had almost no prior judicial experience, was appointed to fill out the unexpired term of Judge Cureton. Moore served as Chief Justice a very short time, and there was little time for anyone to become very well acquainted with him. He took the office on April 17, 1940, and decided not to place his name on the July Primaries docket of that year, and his tenure of office ended on December 31, 1940. He felt that he was not financially able to make the race for re-election. The first of the year 1941 Moore returned to Paris, where he resumed the practice of law until his retirement in 1951. He died on November 3, 1956. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Correspondence with Mr. Bill Pugsley, Executive Director, The Texas Supreme Court Historical Society. "Moore Becomes Chief Justice," Texas Bar Journal, May 1940. "Biographical Sketch of William Folsom Moore," Hardy Moore (son and law partner), Texas Supreme Court Historical Society archives.
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