Temple Lea Houston
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth: 12 Aug 1860 - Austin, Travis, TX
Christening:
Death: 15 Aug 1905
Burial:
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Sam Houston Jr., General (1793-1863)
Mother: Margaret Moffette Lea (1819-1867)
Spouses and Children
1. *Laura Cross (7 Apr 1863 - 1938)
Marriage: 1 Aug 1905
Children:
1. Temple Lea Houston (1884- )
2. Sam Houston III (1891- )
3. Richard C. Houston (1895-1974)
4. Mary Houston (1898- )
Notes
General:
Source: Sam Houston Memorial Museum http://www.shsu.edu/~smm_www/Genealogy/children.shtml
Temple Lea Houston
Temple Lea Houston, the last of Sam and Margaret's eight children was born on August 12, 1860, the first child born in the present governor's mansion in Austin, Texas. Temple Lea Houston was named after his mother's father. He was barely six months old when his father stepped down from the governor's office and Temple's infancy was spent at the Houston's vacation home at Cedar Point and at the rented Steamboat House in Huntsville.
When his father died in 1863, Temple moved with his family to Independence; with his mothers death during a yellow fever epidemic in 1869, the young boy made his home with his sister "Nannie" and her husband in Georgetown, Texas.
He entered Baylor University at Independence, and graduated in 1878. Then he enrolled at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College to receive a year of military training.
When he completed his college work, Temple read for the Texas State Bar at the La Grange law firm of Timmons and Brown. He was admitted to the bar and appointed district attorney of the Panhandle district of Texas in 1882.
As flamboyant as his famous father, Temple Lea was also as brilliant, making a name for himself on the west Texas frontier. For more than two decades from 1881 to 1905, Houston's colorful son was known as the southwest's most brilliant and eccentric trial lawyer. Cowboys, murderers, gunfighters, and cattle thieves were among his clients.
During his colorful career Temple Lea made many famous speeches, including one at San Jacinto in 1880 and another at the dedication of the Texas capital in 1888. He is best remembered, however, for his plea in the district court of Woodward, Oklahoma on behalf of Minnie Stacey "the soiled dove".
So effective was Temple Lea as an actor and attorney that the people of his district elected him their state senator in 1885, and he served in the Texas legislature during the nineteenth and twentieth sessions. Temple was much admired and one of his contemporaries described him in this manner:
"He was handsome, brilliant, and charming; a perfect model of physical manhood, six feet in height, straight as an Indian with a figure as exquisitely molded as a statue of ancient Greeks..."
On February 17, 1882 Temple Lea Houston married Laura Cross and the couple had four children, Temple Lea Jr., Sam, Mary Lea and Richard. During the later years of his life, Temple Lea and his family resided in Woodward, Oklahoma, where the lawyer was employed as attorney for the Santa Fe Railroad. Temple Lea Houston passed away and was buried in Woodward on August 18, 1905 and was survived by his widow and four children. His life had been as adventurous and exciting as his famous father's.