Frontier Lawyer. At age 13, having lost both parents, he joined a cattle drive, and he later worked on a riverboat on the Mississippi River. In 1877 he returned to Texas to attend the Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Texas A&M). He transferred to Baylor University, where he graduated in 1880 with honors in law and philosophy. He was the youngest attorney in Texas when he opened his practice. Temple spoke French and Spanish and seven Indian languages. In 1888, he gave the dedication address for the opening of the current Texas Capitol. In 1894 Temple moved his family to the cattle town of Woodward in the Oklahoma Territory. He was legal counsel of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railways; its Woodward depot became one of the most important points in the Territory for cattle shipping to the East. Temple became widely known and popular for his courtroom dramatics. He was charged with murder in the shooting of a brother of the outlaw Al Jennings, after an argument in the Cabinet Saloon, and was acquitted. Temple won a reputation as a brilliant trial lawyer known for his courtroom dramatics. In 1899 he delivered his "Soiled dove plea" in a makeshift courtroom in Woodward's opera house. The argument on behalf of Minnie Stacey, a prostitute who worked at the Dew Drop Inn, became famous for winning her acquittal after only ten minutes of consideration by the jury. In his personal life he and his wife Laura Cross had seven children, only four of whom lived past infancy.
HOUSTON, TEMPLE
A Southwestern Type
Boston Herald
Temple Houston, youngest son of General Sam Houston, who may be called the creator of the republic of Texas, has recently died in Oklahoma. Temple Houston was one of the strange, abnormal characters that achieve notoriety on the frontier. He did not like to be referred to as the son of Sam Houston, preferring to have a reputation of his own, and he won it. He was abnormal in his physical proportions, in his mental traits and in his notions of becoming attire. He had talent, a considerable acquaintance with books, a love for liquor and for Tabasco sauce, and was a compound of feminine sensitiveness and brawling habits. By profession he was a lawyer, and a successful one in the courts of the Southwest. He had been a Senator in Texas, and was a fervid, imaginative orator. His courage was unquestioned, and he had killed his man in a saloon fight. He was one of those the true tale of whose lives seems stranger than fiction. He died when 45 years old of a stomach trouble caused by intemperance. (Source: The Morning Oregonian (Portland, OR - Tuesday, September 12, 1905