John Woods Rowland was the third son and seventh child of William M. Rowland and Elizabeth C. Brown, who lived in Rutherford County their entire lives. John was born in 1859 in the rural southwest corner of the county, not far from the village of Rockvale. (1) During his long lifetime, he experienced the upheavals caused by three wars and two national financial collapses by the time he died in 1946 in the town of Harriman in eastern Tennessee’s Roane County. (2)
As a child, John experienced the hardships of the Civil War first-hand. In 1862, Union and Confederate battle lines moved across the county several times before the Union finally defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Stones River (31 December 1862-2 January 1863) and garrisoned a military force at the county seat of Murfreesboro.
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