Vassar graduate Mary Boyce Temple, the only child of Oliver Perry Temple (1820–1907) and Scotia Caledonia Hume Temple (1832–1889), gave the university $25,000 in 1919 to establish the Oliver Perry Temple Foundation to purchase and breed purebred animals and improve plant breeding. In accepting the gift, the trustees noted that it was “the first large gift of this munificent character ever made by any citizen of the state to the University during his lifetime.” She donated her father’s (Judge Oliver Perry Temple) private papers to the university library in 1922.
When she died in the spring of 1929, it appeared that the university would receive $280,000 from her estate for the purpose of erecting an auditorium in honor of her mother, but the Depression dealt harshly with her holdings, and by the time attorney fees and other expenses were paid, only a modest apartment building, the Whitfield Apartments on Church Street, remained. Temple also donated her complete library to UT. Her greatest contribution to the area probably is having given her personal check to take an option on the Blount Mansion property to prevent it from being sold to become a parking lot. The charter of the university (as Blount College) was issued at Blount Mansion in 1794.