John Woods Rowland & Anna Lou Whitus

John Woods Rowland was the son of William M. Rowland and Elizabeth C. Brown, who lived in southwest Rutherford County all their lives.  He was born in 1859 not far from the village of Rockvale in the southwest portion of the county. (1)  (Please see his bio here.)

John’s early years were marked by the Civil War; Union and Confederate battle lines moved across the county several times between 1862 and 1864, and Union forces established a military garrison at the county seat of Murfreesboro, just a few miles from the Rowland home. (2)

Life would have been grim during those years, with roving guerrilla bands robbing and harassing residents, and schools and churches largely suspending their activities.  In the words of a reporter travelling with Union General Rosecrans in late 1862:

“Fallow fields were spread out before the vision… Fences had been absorbed in camp-fires; the click of the old mill wheel had ceased; broken windows and shattered frames stared from deserted homesteads… Ravage and desolation everywhere.  There were no little children gamboling on cabin thresholds.  Hardly a dog barked.” (3)

After the war ended, six-year-old John would have begun attending one of the local one-room schools in 1865 or 1866, but education was not held in high value on the farm where extra male hands were always needed to work the crops and tend to livestock.  His formal education ended after third grade and he began working as a farm hand for his older brother, Granville, who lived near their parents and brother Meredith. (4, 5)

John first married Mary J. Jenkins in Rutherford County in 1883. (6)   Mary lived nearby with her parents, Eli and Nancy Jenkins, between John’s uncle Littleberry Rowland and James W. Shedd, who operated a grist mill on the line between the 10th and 12th Civil Districts.  (See above map.)

John continued to live in Rutherford County for the next decade, probably working as a farmer, and was listed in Rutherford County tax books for the 10th and then the 12th Civil Districts.  The 1891 list of male voters also identifies him as living in Civil District 12.

By 1892, Mary had died, and John married Anna Lou Whitus in February. Anna was the daughter of George Washington Whitus and Nancy Levina Puckett; she was born in neighboring Bedford County but moved with her family to Rutherford County as a small child. (7)  John and Anna’s first child, Leonard, was born in Rutherford County nine months later. (8) 

Within a year, John and Anna moved east to Oliver Springs in Roane County, where their second child, Irwin Washington, was born in 1895. They may well have moved in search of work; we have not yet found any known relatives or associates there who might have drawn them to the area. (9) 

In all, the couple had six more children, all but two born in or near Oliver Springs.  Their son John was born in Rhea County in 1909; we don’t know why they were in Rhea but they didn’t remain long and were back in southeastern Morgan County, not far from Oliver Springs, by the 1910 census, when John and his two eldest sons were working as coal miners. (10, 11)

By 1913, John and Anna had moved to the small town of Harriman, where their youngest daughter Florence was born. It was there that their son Leonard was involved in a train accident and lost his right foot. (12)  John and most of his children worked at the Harriman Hosiery Mill on Siluria Street, six blocks from their rented homes, and were almost certainly affected by a failed year-long strike by many mill workers from 1933 to 1934. (13, 14)   John and Anna’s home was often multi-generational, with several grandchildren living with them from 1930 to 1940. (15)

It’s unclear what John’s source of income was in 1940.  According to the census, he was not working due to old age, but did have outside income though the source was not specified in the census.  His married daughter Katie Rowland Posey lived next door with her husband, and both were employed; it’s possible she was helping support her parents. (16)

John died in 1946 from arteriosclerosis and myocarditis.  He is buried in Willard Park Cemetery south of the town. (17)

After John’s death, Anna moved to Lenoir City to live with her daughter, Jennie Bell Rowland Collins. It was there that she passed away in 1951. (18)

John Woods Rowland (b. 13 Nov 1859, Rutherford Co., TN – d. 2 Sep 1946, Harriman, Roane Co., TN)
m1. 5 Apr 1883, Rutherford Co., TN
Mary J. Jenkins (b. 1863, probably Rutherford Co., TN – d. by 1892, probably Rutherford Co., TN)
m2. 18 Feb 1892, Rutherford Co., TN
Anna Lou Whitus (b. 16 Aug 1867, Bedford Co., TN – d 27 May 1951, Lenoir City, Loudon Co., TN)
Children: 
i. Leonard Elgin Rowland (b. 13 Nov 1892, Rutherford Co., TN – 5 Oct 1957, Cincinnati, Hamilton Co., OH); m. Maude Lavinia Hamby Lay
ii. Irwin Washington Rowland (b. 22 Aug 1895, Oliver Springs, Roane Co., TN – d. 17 Jul 1970, Monticello, Guilford Co., NC); m1. Montana Olie Smith; m2. Mary Elizabeth Carter
iii. Katie Lou Rowland (b. 26 Feb 1898, Morgan Co., TN – d. 30 Mar 1975, Harriman, Roane Co., TN); m. Millard Chester Posey
iv. Harry Lee Rowland (b. 9 Dec 1900, Oliver Springs, Roane Co., TN – 3 Feb 1956, Harriman, Roane Co., TN); m. Lula Kathryn Branham
v. Jennie Bell Rowland (b. 19 Oct 1903, Coalfield, Morgan Co., TN – d. 13 Dec 1983, Lenoir City, Loudon Co., TN); m. William Collins
vi. Roy Hayes Rowland (b. 10 Mar 1906, Oliver Springs, Anderson Co., TN – d. 30 May 1978, Harriman, Roane Co., TN); m1. Carrie Mae Lowe; m2. Lena Florence Kreis; m3. Madeline “Madge” Dawn; m4Marie Belle Ritter; m5. Hannah Elizabeth Coward
vii. John Wesley Rowland (b. 3 Jul 1909, Dayton, Rhea Co., TN – d. 6 Sep 1986, Harriman, Roane Co., TN); m. Bertha Cynthia Sandifer
viii. Florence Eva Rowland (b. 5 Jul 1913,  TN – d. 23 Oct 1970, Anderson Co., TN); m1. Floyd Adkisson; m2. Wilburn Washington Schubert

Sources:

1. Tennessee Department of Public Health, death certificate, no. #21891 (1946), John W. Rowland, Division of Vital Statistics, Nashville.
2. Stephen V. Ash, Middle Tennessee Society Transformed, 1860–1870: War and Peace in the Upper South; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988, pp 90-92.
3. Stephen V. Ash, When the Yankees Came: Conflict & Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861-1865, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995, pp 99-106.
4. Paul H. Bergeron, Stephen V. Ash, Jeanette Keith, Tennesseans and Their History; Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999, p. 193; 1940 US census, Roane County, Tennessee, Harriman City, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 2, sheet 11-B, dwelling #252, J.W. Rowland, accessed via Ancestry online 20 Aug 2021; 1870 U.S. census, Rutherford County, Murfreesboro P.O., Tennessee, population schedule, sheets 424-425 (stamped), dwelling #149, family #150, Wm. Rowland, accessed via Ancestry.com 14 Apr 2018.
5. 1880 U.S. census, Rutherford County, Tennessee, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 198, page 13, dwelling #104, family #105, Gran. Rowland, accessed via Ancestry.com 27 Jan 2008; 1880 U.S. census, Rutherford County, Tennessee, enumeration district (ED) 198, p. 17, dwelling #143, family #144, William G. Fain, accessed via Ancestry.com 17 May 2014.
6. Rutherford County, Tennessee, Marriage Records, Book 1 (1881-1889), p 65, J.W. Rowland and Miss M.J. Jenkins, 1883, accessed via FamilySearch, FHL #379650; while the entry lists him only as J.W. Rowland, there is no other male Rowland of those initials in the county at that time.
7. Deposition of claimant, 22 Oct 1906, Nancy Puckett Whitus, widow’s indigent pension application, service of George Washington Whitus, Tennessee State Archives; Tennessee Department of Public Health, death certificate, file #51-18537, Annie Lou Rowland, Division of Vital Records, Nashville; Rutherford County, Tennessee, Marriage Records, Book 2 (1889-1907), p 89, J.W. Rowland and Miss Annie Lou Whitis entry, 1892, accessed via FamilySearch, FHL #379650.
8. Tennessee Department of Public Health, delayed birth records, 1869-1909 (1953), file #D-427079, Leonard Elgin Rowland. 
9. World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, digital images, Ancestry.com, accessed 10 Oct 2021, Irwin Washington Rowland, file #99, Dayton, Ohio.
10. Tennessee Department of Public Health, delayed birth certificate, file #58754 (1941), John Wesley Rowland, Division of Vital Statistics, Nashville; 1900 U.S. census, Roane County, Tennessee, CD 5, Enumeration District 116, SD 2, enumeration date 2 Jun 1900, sheet 2B, dwelling #36, family #37, line #66, NARA Roll: T623 1593, Ancestry online digital images, accessed 27 Jan 2008.
11. 1910 U.S. census, Morgan County, Tennessee, population schedule, Civil District 2, page 355, enumeration district 51, sheet 16-B, dwelling #437, John Rowland, NARA Roll: T624_1514.
12. Tennessee Department of Public Health, delayed birth certificate, file #D-567474 (1965), Florence Eva Rowland, Division of Vital Statistics, Nashville; email from Margaret Epperson, granddaughter of Leonard Rowland, to Donna Rowland Gough, 27 Mar 2008.
13. World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1940-1947, digital images, Ancestry.com, accessed 14 Aug 2021, John Wesley Rowland, serial #2875, order #111, Roane County, Tennessee.
14. Harriman Hosiery Mills Strike of 1933-34, Patrick D. Reagan, Tennessee Encyclopedia, https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/harriman-hosiery-mills-strike-of-1933-34/, accessed 14 Aug 2021.
15. 1930 U.S. census, Roane County, Tennessee, population schedule, Civil District 1, Harriman City, enumeration district 73-2, sheet 15A, dwelling #275, 433 Carter Street, John W. Rowland, Ancestry online, accessed 27 Jan 2008; 1940 U.S. census, Roane County, Tennessee, Harriman City, Civil District 1, enumeration district 2, sheet 11B, family #252, 429 Carter Street, J.W. Rowland, Ancestry online, accessed 31 Aug 2021.
16. John Rowland certificate of death.
17. Anna Rowland certificate of death; Anna Lou Rowland obituary, Knoxville, The Knoxville Journal, 28 May 1951, p 16.

© 2021, Donna Rowland Gough, all rights reserved.