L.L. ROWLAND, M.D. – L.L. Rowland, M.D., LL. D., F.R.S., was born at Nashville, Tennessee, September 17, 1831, and came with his father, Judge Jeremiah Rowland, across the plains to Oregon in 1844. He dutifully remained and helped at home on the old Donation land claim, North Yamhill, until the day he was twenty-one, when he entered the district school with the ambition and hope of finally finishing, if possible, a full classical course of education in some Eastern university. By working somewhat successfully in the California gold mines in 1849 and 1851, giving his father for his time half the product of his mining labors, and by investing the remaining half in the cheap Mexican cattle of that day, he acquired the necessary means, for the most part, to take him through college. Having qualified himself as best he could in the schools of the country, supplemented by private instruction, for matriculation, as ordinarily required by our universities, he left Lafayette for the East February 8, 1853, aboard the little steamer that first plied the Upper Willamette and Yamhill rivers, proceeding without other than the usual delays incident to travels at that early day, via San Francisco, Panama, Havana and New York, and arriving two months afterwards at his destination. He was the first youth of the new and distant territory in the Union, and teaching in some of the best schools (meanwhile studying medicine), he was married in Marivin, Alabama, November 18, 1859, to Miss Emma J. Sanders, who was born May 1, 1839, and was educated in Franklin College, Tennessee. She bore him five children, only one of whom, however, Levia, now Mrs. Jay C. Smith, survived childhood.
For many years he was among the foremost in educational work, having as a teacher occupied some of the most responsible positions in the country, and having as county school superintendent organized and conducted, in1860, the first teachers’ institute in the state. He also served as a member of the state board of examination, and filled for four years, from 1874 to 1878, the office of state superintendent of public instruction, – the first person elected to that office.
Although he graduated in a theological school, and was ordained a minister in the Christian church, serving in some of the highest and most responsible positions under the state and national associations, and filling for seven years the pastorate of the Christian church in Salem; yet he never deemed it his duty to confine his labors at any time exclusively to the ministry. His many-sided character and versatility of taste fitted him acceptably for many vocations. The profession of medicine, however, has always commanded his best energies. He spared neither pains nor money in his thorough qualification by careful study in the best universities and hospitals in both America and Europe for the best work in his professions; and he constantly keeps abreast with the advances of science by his many valuable society relations, several of which were conferred upon him during his sojourn in the Old World. His professional brethren have often honored him with the highest marks of confidence.
Doctor Rowland was one of the organizing members of the Oregon State Medical Society in 1874, filling subsequently many of its important offices, including that of the presidency. He was several times elected by societies in which he held membership as a representative to the American Medical Association. In 1879 he attended the Amsterdam (Holland) International Medical Association, as a representative of the Medical Department of the Willamette University, of whose faculty he was for a time dean, for several years secretary, and for eight years professor of physiology and microscopy. He is now engaged in the practice of medicine in Salem, Oregon, where he is lecturer on hygiene in the Willamette University, physician to the Oregon State School for the Blind, emeritus professor of physiology and microscopy in the Medical Department of the Willamette University, and president of the State Insurance Company, of which he was one of the organizing members.