ANTIQUE PORTRAIT PAIR — MOORE FAMILY, WINDOM, FANNIN COUNTY, TEXAS Circa 1910-1920. Inscribed verso locating the family's home place.

Two portraits of the same young man from a single sitting with matching oval cut folder mounts.

The photo's verso carries a pencil location description in a period hand, faint but legible under raking light:

J. O. Moore Rte 1 Windom Box 99 3 mi S of [road] 8 mi SW of [illegible] Honey [Grove] - Windom 3/4 mi N of Flag Springs School Windom - Flag Springs School Rd Own Home

The notation is likely a rural property location description of the kind compiled for a farm directory, plat-book listing or mail route book: name, post office route and box, bearings from roads and landmarks, the road the place sits on, and tenure. "Own Home" is the standard term distinguishing an owner-occupier from a tenant, which in a cotton tenancy county says something about the family's standing.

It places the J. O. Moore home three-quarters of a mile north of Flag Springs School, on the Windom to Flag Springs School road, Rural Route 1 Box 99 out of Windom, Fannin County, Texas.

WHO THE MOORES WERE

The 1910 United States Census, Justice Precinct 8, Fannin County, records the household: Oscar Moore, aged 29, a farmer on his own account, born Arkansas; his wife Nodie, aged 24, born Texas, on her second marriage; and her son by her first marriage, entered by the enumerator as "Step son" — JACK McFARLAND, aged 5, born Texas. Oscar's parents lived next door, and had raised thirteen children.

"J. O. Moore" is J. Oscar Moore. Mr. and Mrs. J. O. Moore of Windom, Texas are named in a 1963 Birmingham News engagement announcement as grandparents of Jacqueline Diane McFarland (1943-2025), from whose estate this pair comes. A 1963 airmail envelope from the same estate was sent by Choice Moore, County Judge, Bonham, Texas, postmarked Windom, to Jack McFarland in Birmingham. Three independent documents name this family in this small Texas community. The airmail cover is part of a separate listing.

Flag Springs Cemetery in Fannin County is also known as Wall Cemetery, and the Fannin County Historical Commission records that Judge Choice Moore's mother was a descendant of Jacob Wall — placing the J. O. Moore home in the Wall family's home community.

WHO THE SITTER IS

Not firmly established, and I make no claim. The inscription records the household, not the person in the frame, and may have been written some years after the photograph. Given that Oscar Moore's parents raised thirteen children next door, there were a number of young men of portrait-sitting age at that address. Jack McFarland himself, born 1905, would have been the right age at the late end of this mount's date range. Buyers may draw their own conclusions.