Named in 1923 for Agnes Evelyn Temple (1907-1961) by her father Walter, founder and namesake of Temple City. Agnes was born on old family property on Rancho la Merced; after her nine-year-old brother Thomas found oil there in 1914, the Temples became fabulously rich, and Agnes was sent to the Southland’s finest Catholic girl schools. Tragedy struck in December 1922 when her mother Laura (née Gonzalez) passed away suddenly, but Agnes focused on her studies and her music – she was a gifted pianist – and in 1925 enrolled at Dominican College in San Rafael. She received a Bachelor of Music degree there in 1929. Later that year, and shortly after the stock market crash that would wipe out her own family’s net worth, Agnes Temple married Luis Paul Fatjó (1904-1946), a wealthy Spanish American from Santa Clara, CA. They had homes in San Francisco and Atherton and raised two children. Seven months after Luis’s untimely death, Agnes married one Ralph Tally, but like her mother and first husband, she met an early end and died of cancer at 54.
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