Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands

Background

Ethnicity: Of Welsh descent, according to biographical sources.

Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands was born on April 1, 1901, in Cambria, Wisconsin, a village in Columbia County. He was the son of David Morris Rowlands and Emma (née Davies) Rowlands. The family was of Welsh descent, and he had an elder brother, Morris.

Wisconsin had become a state in 1848, and the Progressive movement associated with Robert M. La Follette shaped its politics during the years of Rowlands's youth. La Follette, who served as governor and later as a United States senator, promoted reforms such as direct primaries and limits on corporate donations to political candidates. This reform tradition formed the background to the political career that Rowlands later pursued.

Education

He attended public and high schools and then St. John's Military Academy, a private military boarding school at Delafield in Waukesha County, Wisconsin.

He later attended Ripon College, a private liberal arts college in Ripon, Wisconsin. Founded in 1851 as Brockway College, it was incorporated on January 29, 1851, and renamed Ripon College in 1864. Although nonsectarian, it received support from Presbyterian and Congregational churches until 1868, and its first class of four women graduated in 1867.

He also attended the University of Wisconsin, the state's public university, which was founded in 1848 and held its first classes on February 5, 1849. The university became a land-grant institution in 1866, and in the early twentieth century it became identified with the Wisconsin Idea, the principle that the university's work should benefit people beyond its campus.

Career

Rowlands's public career began in local government. He was a member of the Cambria Village Board in 1925, and he took his seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly on January 3, 1927, representing the Columbia County district. The Assembly is the lower house of the Wisconsin Legislature, and its members in this period handled state legislation, committee work, and appropriations.

During his Assembly service he was a state delegate to the National Flood Control Conference in 1927. The conference took place in the aftermath of the 1927 Mississippi River floods, which intensified national debate over flood control. He also served on the Wisconsin Legislative Interim Committee on Prison Labor from 1927, the State Capitol Annex Building Committee in 1929, and the interim committee studying the retirement system for state employees in 1929.

He was elected to the Wisconsin State Senate in a special election in April 1935, representing the 27th district, and he served until January 1937. The Senate is the upper house of the state legislature. In the same period he was chairman of the Wisconsin Progressive Party from 1934 to 1936.

Biographical accounts of his daughter describe him as a banker and state legislator. In 1939 he was appointed to a position in the United States Department of Agriculture, and the family moved to Washington, D.C. In 1942 he was appointed branch manager of the Office of Price Administration, a federal agency that administered wartime price controls, and the family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Rowlands died on March 28, 1961, in Harris County, Texas, the county that includes Houston, four days before his sixtieth birthday.

Politics

Rowlands was a member of the Wisconsin Progressive Party and served as its chairman from 1934 to 1936. The party grew out of the progressive faction of the Republican Party of Wisconsin led by the La Follette family, combined with radical farm and labor groups active in the state. Its formation was held on May 19, 1934, and it carried the reform program associated with Robert M. La Follette, including the Wisconsin Idea, agrarianism, progressivism, and left-wing populism.

The party took a left-wing position in Wisconsin politics and at times cooperated with the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1936 it won a majority in both houses of the state legislature, and Rowlands's service in the Senate during those years placed him within this reform coalition. Its earlier namesake, the national Progressive Party of 1924, had centered on La Follette's presidential campaign and carried only Wisconsin.

After La Follette's sons led the party's revival, its influence declined, and the party returned its members to the Republican ranks in 1946. Rowlands's political career thus belongs to the brief period when Wisconsin's Progressive movement held major legislative power as an independent party.

Membership

Rowlands was a member of the Masons, where he held the thirty-second degree, and of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Freemasonry is a fraternal order that emphasizes moral development, fellowship, and charitable work among its members. The Elks is a fraternal and charitable order founded in the United States in the nineteenth century.

• Thirty-second degree (32°)

  Masons , United States

• Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks , United States

Connections

Rowlands married Mary Allen Neal on September 10, 1924, at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Fort Smith is a city on the Arkansas River along the Oklahoma border. Mary Allen Neal was a painter who later worked as an actress under the stage name Lady Rowlands.

The couple had two children: a son, David Morris Rowlands, and a daughter, Virginia Cathryn Rowlands, who became the actress Gena Rowlands. Gena Rowlands was an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated actress, and she received an honorary Academy Award in 2015.

Rowlands's parents were David Morris Rowlands and Emma (née Davies) Rowlands, and his elder brother was Morris.

Father:

David Morris Rowlands

Mother:

Emma Rowlands

Born Emma Davies.

Wife:

Mary Allen Neal

A painter who later worked as an actress under the stage name Lady Rowlands.

Son:

David Morris Rowlands

Daughter:

Gena Rowlands

Born Virginia Cathryn Rowlands; an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated actress who received an honorary Academy Award in 2015.

Brother:

Morris J. Rowlands

References

• Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands Encyclopedia article covering his service in the Wisconsin State Assembly and Senate, his chairmanship of the Wisconsin Progressive Party, and his family.
• Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands Structured data record identifying him as an American politician (1901-1961), with his birth and death dates, offices held, and party membership.