Robert S. Gould, Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/gould-robert-simonton

Robert Simonton Gould, attorney, Confederate officer, and judge, was born in Iredell County, the son of Daniel and Zilpha Simonton Gould. His father, who was a New Hampshire native and a Presbyterian minister, died when Robert was seven, after which his mother moved the family to the university town of Tuscaloosa, Ala., where she opened a boarding house.

In 1840, at age fourteen, Gould entered the University of Alabama and was graduated four years later. In 1845, he started to read law, but his studies were interrupted by his appointment to a tutorship in mathematics at the university. In 1849, he left the university faculty and, in partnership with former Alabama Governor Joshua L. Martin, opened a law practice in Macon, Miss. The following year he moved to Centerville, Tex., and in 1853 was elected district attorney of the Thirteenth Judicial District, serving for two terms. In 1855 he married Lenna Barnes, a native of Georgia.

Gould was a member of the Texas Secession Convention of 1861. In the same year, he became judge of the Thirteenth Judicial District, but in early 1862, he resigned his judgeship and joined the Confederate Army. He served as a major in a battalion known as Gould's Battalion, and participated in the Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Jenkin's Ferry battles. In the latter engagement he was seriously wounded. By the war's end he had been promoted to the rank of colonel.

After the war, Gould resumed his legal practice. In 1866, he was again elected judge of the Thirteenth District, but his election was invalidated by Reconstruction military officials on the grounds that it was detrimental to a successful reconstruction. Gould spent the next three years at his farm. In 1870, he moved his law practice to Galveston. In May 1874 he was appointed associate justice of the Texas Supreme Court to fill the unexpired term of Judge Peter W. Gray, and in 1876 he was elected to a six-year term on the court. In 1881, after the resignation of Chief Justice George F. Moore, Gould was appointed to a one-year term as chief justice. In 1882, he failed to receive the Democratic party's endorsement as a candidate for a full term as chief justice; however, before his one-year appointment expired, Gould was appointed to the law faculty of the newly opened University of Texas. He served on the faculty until the spring of 1904.

During his tenure on the bench, Gould delivered a number of important decisions. Among them were his dissenting opinion in Ex Parte Towles (48 Texas 413) and majority opinions in Yancy v. Battle (48 Texas 46), Johnson v. Harrison (48 Texas 257), and Veramendi v. Hutchins (48 Texas 531).

Gould was a member of the Free Presbyterian Church of Austin and was buried in that city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Gould

Robert Simonton Gould (December 16, 1826 – June 30, 1904) was a justice of the Texas Supreme Court from May 1874 to December 1882, serving as chief justice from November 1881 to December 1882.

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Robert Simonton Gould, Confederate Army officer, lawyer, judge, and law professor, son of Daniel and Zilpha (Simonton) Gould, was born in Iredell County, North Carolina, on December 16, 1826. About 1833 he moved with his widowed mother to Alabama, where he graduated from the University of Alabama in 1844. He taught mathematics for three years and studied law. He obtained a license to practice and opened an office at Macon, Mississippi, in 1849. He moved to Texas in 1850 and resumed his law practice in Centerville. In 1853 he was elected district attorney for the Thirteenth District. In 1855 he married Serena Barnes. In 1861 he was a member of the Secession Convention and was elected judge of the Thirteenth District, but he resigned his office to raise a battalion for the Confederate Army. With the addition of another battalion to his group he became colonel of a regiment. He was wounded and his horse was shot out from under him at Jenkins Ferry. He returned to Centerville, was reelected district judge in 1866, but in 1867 was removed from office as an "impediment to Reconstruction."

Gould moved to Galveston, Texas, in 1870. He was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court in 1874 and was elected to the position in 1876. Governor Oran M. Roberts appointed him chief justice in 1881, but Gould was not reelected to the post in 1882. In 1883 he and Roberts were named by the UT board of regents to be the first professors of law at the University of Texas. Gould resigned his professorship in the spring of 1904 and died in Austin on June 30 of that year.