Mary Boyce Temple

Mary Boyce Temple
Born(1856-07-06)July 6, 1856[1]
Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
DiedMay 16, 1929(1929-05-16) (aged 72)
Resting placeOld Gray Cemetery
Knoxville, Tennessee
Alma materEast Tennessee Female Institute
Vassar College[2]
Notable workSketch of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1886), Notable Men of Tennessee (editor) (1912)
Parent(s)Oliver Perry Temple and Scotia Caledonia Hume[2]

Mary Boyce Temple (July 6, 1856 – May 16, 1929) was an American philanthropist and socialite, active primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was the first president of the Ossoli Circle, the oldest federated women's club in the South, and published a biography of the club's namesake, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, in 1886.[2] She also cofounded the Tennessee Woman's Press and Author's Club, the Knoxville Writer's Club, and the Knox County chapter of the League of Women Voters.[3] She represented Tennessee at various international events, including the Paris Exposition of 1900 and at the dedication of the Panama Canal in 1903.[2]

Temple was the founder and long-time regent of the Bonny Kate Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution,[2] and helped launch Knoxville's preservationist movement with her efforts to save Blount Mansion in the 1920s.[2] In her later years, she donated tens of thousands of dollars to the University of Tennessee for agricultural research, and left the bulk of her estate to the university after her death.[2]

  1. ^ Catalog entry for Mary Boyce Temple diploma[permanent dead link], University of Tennessee Special Collections Library. Retrieved: 10 October 2011.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Mary Rothrock, The French Broad-Holston Country: A History of Knox County, Tennessee (Knoxville, Tenn.: East Tennessee Historical Society, 1972), p. 495.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference deaderick was invoked but never defined (see the help page).