Judge John Moore: A Biographical Sketch
Portrait of John Moore by artist John Beale Bordley, c. 1843-1845.
On loan to the Shadows-on-the-Teche.
On April 15, 1841, Mary Conrad Weeks, widow of David Weeks, married Judge John Moore of Franklin. Following the marriage, John played an important role in the history of the Shadows. Family letters indicate the children of David and Mary came to respect and love their stepfather. Charles Conrad Weeks, who was nine years old at the time of the marriage, later named one of his sons John Moore Weeks.
John Moore was born in Berkeley County, Virginia (now West Virginia), in 1788. His parents, Lewis Moore and Rebecca Henshaw, moved from Virginia heading west and south sometime after 1795, moving through Kentucky and arriving in Opelousas before 1801. In 1810, John, at age twenty-two, married Adelaïde Demeant, daughter of Lewis George Demeant, who owned a large plantation near Franklin.
In 1816, John was acting as justice of the peace in St. Mary Parish and also "trading law" under Judge Joshua Baker of Franklin. In 1822, he purchased the property in St. Landry Parish that is now known as Magnolia Ridge near Washington, Louisiana. From 1825-1831, John represented St. Martin Parish in the Louisiana House of Representatives. During the mid-1830s he was listed as a Parish Judge in St. Mary Parish.
John and Adelaïde had two daughters: Evelina, born in 1813, and Adelaïde, born in 1815. Both were already married when John’s wife died at the Magnolia Ridge plantation in 1836.
Five years after his wife’s death, John wed Mary Conrad Weeks. The two likely had known one another for several years, probably meeting socially in New Iberia and Franklin where each had friends and family. Also, John’s signature appears on legal documents relative to the Weeks estate, indicating his involvement with the family as legal council.
Following the marriage, John was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1840 and 1851, during which time both he and Mary moved back and forth between the Shadows and Washington, D.C. In early 1861, John served as a state representative to the secession convention held in Baton Rouge, where he proposed "to dissolve the union between the State of Louisiana and the other states united with her under the compact of government entitled ‘The Constitution of the United States.’”
During the war, John worked in the Louisiana State Legislature at Baton Rouge and later in Shreveport. Mary remained at Shadows, where she died on December 27, 1863.
In a letter written on April 5, 1866, to his cousin Margaret in Baltimore, John writes of the loss of his wife, stating the loss was irreparable. In this same letter, he writes that he is living with his stepson William F. Weeks “at the former residence of my wife,” adding “indeed my Step children are as much attached to me as my own children.”
He died at the Shadows a year later on June 17, 1867, at the age of 79. He is buried in the cemetery on the property next to Mary.
Originally published in The Shadows Service League Newsletter (Vol. 8, No. 4), April 1989.
Edited by Adam Foreman, EdD, May 2026.
