Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

Livingston Lindsay (1806-1892)

Livingston Lindsay

Associate Justice, Texas Supreme Court, 1867-1870

Livingston Lindsay was born in Orange County, Virginia on October 16, 1806. His grandfather had come from Scotland and was an early settler of the area. Lindsay's mother was a devout Episcopalian who reportedly carried him some forty miles on horseback as an infant so he could receive the sacrament of baptism. Lindsay attended the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Following his graduation from that institution he moved to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where he read law and was admitted to the bar. He practiced law briefly before teaching school for a time in Princeton, Kentucky.

Lindsay moved to La Grange, Texas in 1860 and began practicing law there. He was appointed as one of the original members of the Military Court following the ouster of former secessionist justices as “impediments to Reconstruction” in September 1867. He attended the Constitutional Convention of 1868-69, where he was considered a moderate. He served on the court until it was reorganized under the Constitution of 1869 and the number of judges was reduced from five to three.

After leaving the supreme court Lindsay served as a district judge and as judge of Fayette County, where he died in La Grange in 1892 at he age of eighty-seven.

Notable opinions

Galan v. Town of Goliad, 32 Texas reports 776 (Tex. 1870) (affirming judgment for defendants in adverse possession case where state had erroneously doubly granted land, ruling that junior grantee possesses land in question where it successfully holds adversely for a length of time sufficient to met statute of limitations).

Shreck v. Shreck, 32 Texas reports 578 (Tex. 1870) (affirming divorce decree, as lower court properly had jurisdiction since marriage contract viewed as exception to rule that the laws of location of making of contract governs its construction and wife's domicile in Texas was sufficient to grant jurisdiction; evidence was sufficient and jury charges without error to sustain verdict).

Sources

Davenport, Jewette Harbert. The History of the Supreme Court of the State of Texas 90 (Austin, Texas: Southern Law Book Publishers, 1917).

Norvell, James R. The Reconstruction Courts of Texas 1867-1873, 62 The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 141-163 (October, 1958).

Shelley, George E. The Semicolon Court of Texas, 48 The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 449-468 (April, 1945).

Thompson, John D. Lindsay, Livingston, Handbook of Texas Online (last updated June 6, 2001). http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/LL/fli6.html

Extended bibliography