Biography:

Eron Opha Moore (Mrs. Dunbar) Rowland

Eron Opha Moore (1861-1951) was the daughter of Major Benjamin B. Bratton (c. 1815- unknown) and Ruth Stovall Rowland Moore (c. 1832-1889), who was the sister of Dunbar Rowland’s father. Eron, who went by the childhood nickname “Dixie,” was first married to Andrew E. Gregory (1849-1900) in 1885 in Monroe County. Gregory died in 1900 and according to one online source, was treated during his terminal illness by Dr. Peter Whitman Rowland (Eron’s cousin and Dunbar Rowland’s brother).

The widowed Eron was employed as an assistant at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History on October 6, 1902. In his second annual report, Rowland said, “Mrs. Gregory has given faithful and efficient service for the past year, and I feel it my duty to say that her services are worth more than the amount paid her.” Her salary was $480, and in the report, Rowland asked the board to increase it to $700.

Dunbar Rowland married Eron on December 20, 1906, at the Flora home of his brother Dr. Robert Walter Rowland. The marriage was performed by Bishop Theodore DuBose Bratton, who later became a member of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History board of trustees. Of her marriage to Rowland it was said, “Their beautiful devotion to each other and steadfastness of purpose in their work have been a subject of comment among their friends and acquaintances.”

Eron was educated in part by her father, who had been a professor of Latin and Greek. In her youth she contributed poems, stories, and sketches to area newspapers, foreshadowing her productive writing career later in life. After her marriage to Rowland she continued to write and assist him at MDAH.

Mrs. Rowland was extremely active in the community and many of her endeavors were related to the patriotic societies of which she was a part: the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), the Colonial Dames, and United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). Her work with the UDC helped save the Old Capitol from being torn down in the 1910s. She wrote a history of the Natchez Trace and assisted the DAR in marking the roadway. She also chaired the committee that put the “grand central stairway” in the Governor’s Mansion in 1908 and supplied soldiers with books during World War I. In 1933, Eron received the honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee.

After Dunbar Rowland’s death on November 1, 1937, Eron served as acting director of the department until January 1, 1938, when Dr. William D. McCain (1907-1993) became director. She then retired to her home at 429 Mississippi Street and gathered their accumulated books and papers to start the “Rowland Historical Library,” where scholars were invited to conduct their research. At the time of her death in 1951 she was working on “The Story of Jackson,” a history of the city. Dr. McCain finished the project, using parts of Eron’s work. Her unfinished manuscript has been preserved in the MDAH holdings.

Eron Opha Moore Rowland died on January 6, 1951.

 
Scope and Content Note:
 

Series Identification:

Series 1:  
"Correspondence and Papers Concerning the Mississippi Territory in the War of 1812, 1812–1827," compiled for Mrs. Dunbar Rowland, pp. 641

Series 2:  
Manuscript (typewritten, printer's copy) of Mrs. Dunbar Rowland, Andrew Jackson's Campaign Against the British, or the Mississippi Territory in the War of 1812, Concerning the Military Operations of the Americans, Creek Indians, and Spanish, 1813–1815 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1926, pp. xvii, 424), pp. 249

Series 3:  
Manuscript (typewritten, printer's copy) of Mrs. Dunbar Rowland, Life, Letters and Papers of William Dunbar of Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland, and Natchez, Mississippi: Pioneer Scientist of the Southern United States (Jackson: Press of the Mississippi Historical Society, 1930, pp. 410), pp. 475