Moore's parents, William H. and Mary Garland (Marks) Moore, were members of Virginia families, his mother being the younger half-sister of Meriwether Lewis. After their marriage, they moved to Elbert County, Georgia, where George Fleming Moore was born on July 17, 1822, the seventh son of a family of ten sons and two daughters. Later the family moved to Alabama.
In 1839, Moore entered the University of Alabama and in 1840, was a law student at the University of Virginia, but, on account of his father's financial reverses, he did not graduate from either institution. He began the study of the law in 1842 and was admitted to the bar in 1844.
After two years of practice in Alabama, Moore removed to Texas, residing first in Crockett, then in Austin, and later in Nacogdoches, where he became the senior member of the well-known firm of Moore and Walker. In 1858, his firm was made reporter for the supreme court and brought out volumes 22-24 of the Texas Reports (1860 - 61). During the Civil War, he served as colonel of the 17th Regiment of Texas Cavalry but resigned to accept a place on the supreme court of the state, to which he was elected in 1862 to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Oran M. Roberts. When in 1866 the state, acting under President Johnson's plan of reconstruction, drafted a new constitution and elected a new state government, he was elected chief justice, but in 1867 upon the adoption of the congressional plan of Reconstruction he, with his associates of the supreme court, was removed by the federal military authorities. At the end of the Reconstruction period, when the people of Texas regained control of their government in 1874, he was appointed by Richard Coke as an associate justice of the state supreme court. After the adoption of the Constitution of 1876, he was elected as one of the two associate justices and was appointed a chief justice in 1878, when Chief Justice Roberts resigned to become governor. In 1881, because of ill-health and impaired eyesight, he resigned from the court. He died in Washington, D. C. His body was sent to Austin for burial.
One of the most important of Moore's opinions may be found in Ex parte F. H. Coupland, in which he upheld the power of the Confederate Congress to raise an army by conscription. In 1864, Moore showed the quality of his courage by declaring in contempt of his court the military authorities in Texas who had seized for military punishment five citizens then held in custody by an officer of the supreme court. In the case of Jacob Kuechler vs. Geo. W. Wright, he wrote an exhaustive opinion, establishing the rule, ever since followed in Texas, that all executive officers except the governor are in proper cases subject to control by the writ of mandamus.
Quotations: "There is no officer or tribunal, civil or military, known to the law of the land, that could, without a violation of law and a contempt of this court, forcibly take from under its control, and without its consent, said prisoners, until the final adjudication by the court upon the matter before it. "
Quotes from others about the person
One of Moore's successors in the office of chief justice declared him to have been "possibly the greatest equity Judge in the history of the Court".
Moore was married in Alabama, in 1846, to Susan Spyker, who with six of their seven children survived him.
21 October 1822 - 7 March 1893
24 November 1857 - 19 September 1920
6 March 1856 - 21 January 1943
16 August 1850 - 1 March 1905
28 January 1854 - 27 September 1902
6 November 1859 - 21 May 1923
