Dudley T. (D. T.) Rogers

Dudley T. Rogers was born in 1863 in Jackson, Tennessee. In the 1893, Rogers moved to Jonesboro to accept an instructor position at State Normal School where he worked for a year before becoming superintendent of the Jonesboro schools. He held that position for twenty-one years before being hired as a registrar and instructor at the State School of Agriculture (today Arkansas State University). Rogers was County Examiner where he advanced and promoted growth of rural schools. He was also president of the State Teachers Association for a term. Rogers ran for State Superintendent of Public Institutions in 1914 and was defeated by George B. Cook by a slim margin.

Rogers married Elise Baker on December 27, 1894 and had two daughters, Mary and Elise. A few years after his wife died, he married Nannie Adams and had two daughters, Josephine and Adelaide. In late February 1920, Rogers contracted typhoid fever from which he did not recover from. Rogers died on April 4, 1920.

Mary Taylor Rogers Brown

Mary Taylor Rogers Brown was born on November 15, 1895 in Jonesboro, AR, to D. T. and Elise Rogers. Her mother died when Brown was four, following the birth of her sister, and was cared for by her aunts in Jackson, Tennessee until her father remarried.

After graduating valedictorian at Jonesboro High School in 1913, she attended Arkansas A & M where upon graduating she became an instructor. During the summer, Brown went to school. She was given a leave of absence to finish work at the University of Wisconsin. She continued to teach until she married Alfred Hewlette Brown in 1920. They would have two daughters, Mary Elise and Hewlette Rogers.

In 1924, they moved to Pasadena, California where she returned to school at the University of Southern California and received a masters degree in 1934, shortly after her husband’s death. In 1936, Brown and her children moved back to Jonesboro, where she taught at Arkansas State College until she retired in June 1965. Upon retiring, Brown moved back to Pasadena where she lived until her death on December 25, 1981.