FIFTH GENERATION

44. Oliver Perry (Judge) TEMPLE⁽¹⁴⁾ was born on 27 Jan 1820 in Greene County, TN.⁽¹⁵⁾ He died on 2 Nov 1907 in Knoxville, Knox County, Tennessee.
Oliver Perry Temple was reared on the family farm in Tennesse. At 16, he attended Greensville College but, according to his daughter, "...he did not assiduously apply himself to his studies." At 18, he volunteered to leave school to join a military unit (as a non-commissioned officer) to suppress an outbreak of the Cherokee Nation. After three months, he returned to college. Apparently Greensville College had closed and he went first to Tusculum Academy and then Washington College (in Washington County, TN).
Temple left College to practice law in Greensville.
In July 1847, at the age of 27, he ran for Congress as the Whig candidate against veteran Democrat Andrew Johnson. Temple lost by only 313 votes. Johnson went on to become President after Lincoln (in 1865). There is much printed speculation on the "what if" Temple had won.
Temple, while opposed to the election of Lincoln, was an ardent supporter of the Union. He worked long and hard trying to keep Tennessee from joining the Confederecy. In the end, those in Eastern Tennessee lost out to the slave-owning people of Western Tennessee and the state seceded in 1861.
In 1866, he was appointed a chancellor (judge). He served 12 years, and during that time refrained from politics. He served on the Board of Visitors at West Point, Served on the State Board of Agriculture, served on the board of the Deaf and Dumb school, and served on the board of one of the early railroads that eventually became part of the Sourthern Railway.
After the Civil War, he was a Republican and a constant defender of the Union. He wrote several books.
W. B. Lenoir, of the opposite political party from Judge Temple, wrote: "I admired Judge Temple when I was a boy, I think, because he was an aristocrat. I did not attempt to define the word to myself at the time, but give a definition now in its true sense as being one who is too intelligent and honest and too proud of himself, of his family and of his country ever to do a mean or unworthy thing . . . . I am as proud, perhaps more so, of O. P. Temple for what he did not do as for what he did do. He did not use his great influence to persecute those of opposite political sentiments after the Civil war, but to protect them; he did not drag the ermine in the mire of partisan politics or let political prejudice weigh the balance, but dealt out even-handed justice. He was the just judge, the upright citizen, the graceful speaker, the polished southern gentleman."

He was married to Caledonia Scotia HUME (daughter of David HUME and Eliza SAUNDERSON) in Sep 1851. Oliver Perry (Judge) TEMPLE and Caledonia Scotia HUME had the following children:

90 i. Mary Boyce TEMPLE died on 17 May 1929.
Mary Temple was an educated an influential woman in her times. She founded a local chapter of the DAR, traveled widely around the world, Christened ships and was one of the early graduates of Vassar College.
She never married.