Bio of Lula Branham Rowland

Lula Kathryn Branham was the second of Jesse Powers Branham and Laura Ann Thrasher’s three daughters and their fourth child.  She was born on 13 January 1900 in Clinton County, Kentucky, and died 73 years later in Cumberland County, Tennessee. (1) This short bio is a continuing work in progress, with some research still to do, so it will be updated from time to time. (For more details on the family, please see the Harry Rowland and Lula Branham family page.)

Lula was born probably at the family’s farmhouse near the village of Shipley, five miles southwest from Albany, Clinton County’s county seat and its largest town, with 234 residents. (2)  Six years later, Lula entered first grade at the Willen School, a one-room schoolhouse in Shipley on what is now Willen School Road.  The caption on a 1906 photo of the school’s student body published in the local newspaper indicates that several of Lula’s siblings and cousins also attended in various different grades. (3) 

In May 1909, Lula’s home life was jolted when her father Jesse shot a neighbor in their home after the two argued violently about money.  Lula was in the house when the shooting occurred and recalled years later having heard the gunshots and seen the man stagger out the front door and fall dead in the yard.  Jesse was arrested and charged with murder.  (4)

After Jesse was released from jail, the family moved ten miles away to the Piney Woods area of Clinton County, where they were enumerated in the 1910 census on a farm that they rented.  That year also marked the end of Lula’s formal education.  (5)

Sometime between 1911 and 1920, Lula’s family moved to Harriman in Roane County, Tennessee, although we’re still researching to pinpoint the year they moved. George Branham, Lula’s great-grandfather, and his brother William Branham had lived in Roane County in the early 1800s.  In the 1920 census, Lula’s family was enumerated in the home of Reese G. Branham, one of William’s great-grandchildren and Lula’s second cousin. Both Lula and her older sister Lena were reported in that census as hosiery mill workers. The Harriman Hosiery Mill, which opened in 1913, was one of the town’s largest employers and actively sought to hire women. An academic study of labor relations at the mill noted that management had advertised for “girls 14 years of age and over in our temporary training mill… Steady work, pleasant employment, and good pay while training. Parents are especially invited to inspect our mill at any time.”  (6)

It was in Harriman that Lula met and married Harry Lee Rowland.  The couple lived within two blocks of each other in town, and both worked at the Harriman Hosiery Mill, Lula as a line worker and Harry as a fixer (the mill’s term for mechanic).   (7)

After marrying on 21 September 1921 in Harriman, Lula and Harry welcomed their first child, Robert, the next year, followed by two other sons:  Edwin “Buddy” and Glenn.  (8)

Over the next thirty-plus years, Lula held her small family together as they weathered personal tragedies, job losses, and frequent moves.  

On 23 March 1929, Harriman was hit by a flash flood that killed 20 residents.  One of the families that perished in the disaster was that of Lon Branham, his wife Essie, and their only child; we’re still researching to determine if this Branham line was related to ours. (9)

Almost a year later, Lula’s son Buddy died six weeks after contracting whooping cough, complicated by measles and then pneumonia. With no antibiotics available at that time, there was little that doctors could do; penicillin, for instance, was discovered in 1928 but doctors did not begin to use it to treat illnesses until 1942.  (10)

After the 1933-34 strike at the Harriman Hosiery Mill apparently left Lula’s husband Harry unemployed, they moved to Mt. Airy, North Carolina, probably to find work; Lula made sure their youngest son Glenn was enrolled in the local elementary school.  (11)

After moving again to Hendersonville, 185 miles to the southwest, Lula was the family’s main breadwinner, working full-time at the local hosiery mill as a looper, with son Robert just starting a new job at the mill.  (12)

Within two years, however, Lula, her husband and son Glenn had moved yet again, this time returning to Tennessee to a rural area south of Crossville, Cumberland County, where Lula’s parents and younger brother Paul had bought land in the late 1930s.  (Her son Robert had moved by then to Cincinnati, where Harry’s elder brother lived.)  (13) 

After World War II ended, Lula and Harry returned to Harriman.  One of her prized possessions was a coffee grinder, a gift that her son Glenn had gotten while in Germany after the war. 

After Harry died in 1956, Lula decided to move back to Cumberland County for a while, though she travelled once to California to help her son Glenn’s family after his twin sons were born and he was sent out on sea duty with the Navy.  She returned to Cumberland County in the fall and married her second husband, John Scarbro (also spelled Scarbrough).  The marriage didn’t last long.  Her granddaughter recalls meeting “Mr. Scarbro” (as he was called in the family) once and being impressed by his two overweight chihuahuas who seemed to shiver non-stop.  (14)

After Lula’s divorce, she lived alone for a while in a small house with a large garden; gardening was her lifelong passion.  Once, while babysitting her granddaughter, Lula spotted a dog tearing through her garden, trashing the carefully tended rows of vegetables and flowers.  She ran into her bedroom and returned with a revolver in hand, muttering that she’d “take care of that dog for good.”  Fortunately for the dog’s longevity, it had run off by the time she got outside.  (15)

She married for the third time in 1964 to Willie Jones and bought a house in Harriman with a large garden that trailed down the back yard to a small creek lined with blackberry vines.  She visited her son Glenn and his family again after they left Memphis and moved back to California; it was during this visit that she taught her granddaughter to crochet, another of her lifelong passions, along with quilting and handcrafts of all types.  (16)

In 1971, Lula suffered a stroke and spent several weeks in Memphis with her son and his family.  She was the one who did all the cooking, cleaning, and household work at home, and her time in Memphis allowed her to rest and recuperate.  To her often-stated surprise, she became very fond of the family’s Siamese cat, who reciprocated by sitting next to her in the living room and sleeping in her room every night.  (17)

Upon returning to Harriman, Lula decided to sell her Harriman house and purchased a mobile home that she had set up on her nephew Clayton Smith’s property in Cumberland County, not far from where her parents had lived in the 1930s.  She preferred to stay in eastern Tennessee, where she had spent her entire adult life, rather than moving to Memphis and trying to establish new relationships in a new home.  From Cumberland County, she could easily visit friends and family in Harriman and Clinton County, which she did often.  (18)

She passed away suddenly in May 1972 and is buried in the Rowland family plot in Harriman Cemetery with her husband and two sons. (19)

1. Kentucky State Board of Health, delayed birth certificate no. 168267 (1942), Lula Kathryn Branham, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Frankfort; Tennessee Department of Public Health, death certificate, file #72-014220 (1972), Lula Kathryn Jones, Division of Vital Statistics, Nashville.
2. 1900 U.S. census, Clinton County, Kentucky, population schedule, Illwill Township, Magisterial District 4, enumeration district (ED) 39, sheet 4-B, dwelling #68, family #70, Jesse P. Branham; FHL #1240516, accessed on Ancestry online 3 Oct 2021; “Albany, Kentucky,” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Dec 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany%2C_Kentucky.
3. Willen School photograph, 1905, from unidentified newspaper, privately held by Donna Rowland Gough, Reston, Virginia.
4. “Fatal Quarrel Between Neighbors,” The Courier-Journal (Louisville), 13 May 1909, p 6, col. 5, digital images, Newspapers (https://www.newspapers.com); notes from conversations with Lula Rowland, compiled 30 Aug 2021 by Donna Rowland Gough; Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. Jesse Branham, Clinton County grand jury indictment, Clinton County Circuit Court, Sep 1909 term, issued 1 Sep 1909, Kentucky Department of Library and Archives.
5. Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. Jessie Branham, Commonwealth Orders, Clinton County Circuit Court, issued Jan 1910, Kentucky Department of Library and Archives; 1910 U.S. census, Clinton County, Kentucky, population schedule, Piney Woods, Magisterial District 2, enumeration district (ED) 62, sheet 12-B, dwelling #216, family #217, Jesse P. Branham, FHL #1374484, accessed on Ancestry online 3 Oct 2021; education detail for Lula Branham from 1940 U.S. census, Henderson County, North Carolina, Hendersonville, enumeration district (ED) 45-15, sheet 7-A, #110 King Street, Harvey [sic] Roland, NARA , Roll T627, accessed on Ancestry online 31 Oct 2021.
6. 1920 U.S. census, Roane County, Tennessee, Harriman City, Civil District 1, Enumeration District 158, sheet 11-B, dwelling #219, family #250, #1 Clinton Street, Laura Brannan, accessed on Ancestry online 31 Oct 2021; details on hosiery mill workers from Dickinson, W. Calvin, and Patrick D. Reagan, “Business, Labor, and the Blue Eagle: The Harriman Hosiery Mills Strike, 1933-1934,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 3, Tennessee Historical Society, 1996, pp 240-255, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42628434, accessed 24 Oct 2021.
7. 1920 U.S. census, Roane Co, TN, Harriman City, ED 158, sheet 11-B, dwell. 219, fam. #250, Laura Brannan; 1920 U.S. census, Roane County, Tennessee, Harriman City, Civil District 1, Enumeration District 158, sheet 14-A, dwelling #274, family #317, Junction Road, John Roland, NARA Roll T625_1760, accessed on Ancestry online 27 Jan 2008.
8. Roane County, Tennessee, Marriage Records, 1920-1931, page 100, Harry Rowland and Lula Branham entry, 1921; Tennessee State Board of Health, death certificate, file #50 (1922), Robert Lee Rowland, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Nashville; Tennessee State Board of Health, death certificate, file #3998 (1930), Edwin Earl Rolland, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Nashville.
9. Kyle C. Moore, “Stories of Heroism Arise From Choas [sic] of Flood at Harriman,” The Knoxville Journal, Monday, 25 Mar 1929, pp 1 (cols. 4-6), 11 (col. 5). 
10. Tennessee death certificate #3998 (1930), Edwin Earl Rolland; “Penicillin,” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Oct 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin.
11. Glenn Rowland school photograph, 1935/36, Mt. Airy, North Carolina, privately held by Donna Rowland Gough, Reston, VA.
12. 1940 U.S. census, Henderson Co., NC, Hendersonville, ED 45-15, sheet 7A, dwelling #166, 110 [North] King Street, Harvey [sic] Roland.
13. World War II Draft Cards, 1940-1947, digital images, Ancestry.com, accessed 9 Nov 2012, Harry Lee Rowland, serial #T83, order #T10,488, Cumberland County, Tennessee; Cumberland County, Tennessee, Deeds, Roll 72, Vol. 24, pages 159-160, J.B. Southard trustee to Paul R. Branham and Canis Branham, 1936; Vol. 24, pages 475-476, J.B. Southard, trustee, to Jesse P. Branham, 1937; Vol. 25, pages 173-175, J.P. Branham and Laura Branham to Paul Branham, 1938; Vol. 25, pages 175-176, Paul Branham and Canis Branham to J.P. Branham and Laura Branham, 1938.
14. Cumberland County, Tennessee, Marriage Record Book, 1958-1961, Lula Katheryn Rowland and John Ray Scarbro entry, file #2788, page 318, 1959, digital images, Ancestry.com, accessed 8 Nov 2021; notes from conversations with Lula Rowland, compiled 30 Aug 2021 by Donna Rowland Gough.
15. Notes from conversations with Lula Rowland.
16. Roane County, Tennessee, Marriage Record Book, 1962-1968, Lulu Rowland and Willie Lee Jones entry, file #129, page 65, 1964, digital images, Ancestry.com, accessed 8 Nov 2021; notes from conversations with Lula Rowland.
17. Notes from conversations with Lula Rowland.
18. Notes from conversations with Lula Rowland.
19. Tennessee death certificate, file #72-014220 (1972), Lula Kathryn Jones.

(© 2021, DONNA ROWLAND GOUGH)