MOORE, (Judge) Joseph M., St. Landry Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller


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JUDGE JOSEPH MURTAUGH MOORE, OPELOUSAS.--The late Judge Moore, of Opelousas,
Louisiana, was born in Opelousas, September 23, 1824.  The Moores were an old
Virginia family, and the ancestral residence still stands in Berkley county of
that State.  Judge Lewis Moore was a major in the Revolutionary war.  He
married a Virginia lady by the name of Henshaw.  There were born to the
marriage four sons, one of whom, J. Andrew,  was the father of our subject.
Judge Lewis Moore served near Berwick's Bay, and there became a wealthy
planter and property owner.  J. Andrew Moore, father of our subject, was
educated at the Transylvania School of Medicine in Pennsylvania, but never
practised [sic] his profession.  He became a merchant, and afterward a planter
in St. Mary's parish.  He married, and became the father of fourteen children,
twelve of whom grew to maturity.  The late Judge Joseph Murtaugh Moore was the
oldest of the family.  He received his literary education in Jefferson
College, Pennsylvania; after which he returned home and read law in the office
of Caleb L. Swayze, subsequently becoming the law partner of his preceptor.
This partnership existed until the time of Mr. Swayze's death.  He then became
senior partner of the firm of Moore & Morgan.  He continued in the active
practice of law until he was elected senior judge of the Court of Appeals in
1880.  This position he filled with distinction for eight consecutive years.
He was a man of culture and refinement, and of deep research as a jurist.  He
represented St. Landry parish in the Legislature before the war, and was a
member of the Confederate States Legislature during the war.  He was again
elected representative in 1879, and helped frame the present State
constitution.  He never aspired to office, but was willing to make any
sacrifice, no matter how great, when his principles and the people demanded
it.  In the days of reconstruction he became a candidate for Congress, when he
and his friends knew there was not one ray of hope.  But he reduced the
republican majority so materially that his work paved the way to future
democratic success.  He died December 15, 1890.  Judge Moore's first wife was
Annette Wartelle. After her death he married a daughter of Judge Overton, who
still survives him.

Southwest Louisiana Biographical and Historical, Biographical Section, p. 63.
Edited by William Henry Perrin.  Published in 1891, by The Gulf Publishing
Company.