Gould Robert Simonton was a jurist. He was a judge of his home district.
Background
Robert Simonton Gould was born in Iredell County, North Carolina. His father, Daniel Gould, was a Presbyterian minister, a native of New Hampshire.
His mother, Zilpha (Simonton) Gould, was born in North Carolina, and evidently possessed the sturdy qualities of her Scotch-Irish parentage. Her husband died when her son Robert was only seven years old, and the widow established a college boardinghouse at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the seat of the state university, on the meager profits of which she supported her sons until they had completed their college education.
Education
Gould attended the University of Alabama from 1840 to 1844, graduating at the age of eighteen.
The next year, he began the study of law, a career which was interrupted by his election as a tutor in mathematics.
Career
In 1849, Gould obtained a license to practice law and opened an office in Macon, Mississippi, in partnership with the former governor, Joshua L. Martin.
In 1850, he moved to Centerville, Texas, and three years later was elected district attorney of the 13th judicial district. Declining re-election, he returned to private practice, in which he seems to have been successful.
The confidence of his neighbors was attested by his election to the convention of 1861, in which he voted in favor of the ordinance of secession. He had, in the meantime, been elected judge of his home district, but resigned almost at once to enter the Confederate army as a captain.
He was soon a major, in command of a force of his own, called “Gould’s Battalion, ” and after participating in a number of battles and being severely wounded, he emerged from the war a colonel.
In 1865, a widower with a daughter to support, he returned to his long-neglected practice and was almost immediately elected to the position of district judge which he had resigned four years before.
Within the year, his pronounced Southern sympathies proved distasteful to the military authorities and he was removed on the charge of hindering reconstruction. Considering his removal illegal, he did not resume his practice but spent the next three years in the attempt to make a precarious living on his farm near Centerville.
In 1870, he once more commenced the practice of law, this time in Galveston, and four years later, he was appointed by Gov. Coke an associate justice of the supreme court of Texas.
He was elected to the same office under the constitution of 1876, and in 1881, upon the resignation of Justice Moore, became chief justice for the remainder of the term.
His judicial career was almost at an end, however, for he was not renominated by the Democratic convention of He had made himself a master of the difficult subject of community property, and his decisions in this field became precedents of great importance. Notable among them are those in the cases of Yancy vs. Batte, Johnson vs. Harrison, and Veramendi vs. Hutchins.
On September 15, 1883, he was made a member of the law-school faculty.
He died at Austin in his seventy-eighth year.
Achievements
Gould was appointed to the Texas Supreme Court in 1874 and was elected to the position in 1876. He was named by the UT board of regents to be the first professor of law at the University of Texas.
Views
Gould developed a special interest in the Roman law, a subject of unusual importance in the Southwest, and for more than twenty years, he was the central figure in a school in which many of the lawyers of Texas have been trained.
Personality
Gould had none of the arts of the politician and was not a good popular speaker, but he had a clear mind and the tastes and inclinations of a scholar.
With his distinguished record and a personality which is still remembered for its winsome qualities, he was unusually well fitted to become a teacher and leader of young men, and when the University of Texas was opened at Austin.
Connections
In 1855, Gould married Lenna Barnes, a native of Alabama.
