Mary Norris Rawlings

Daily Progress, Thursday June 9, 1960 (front page)

Mary Norris Rawlings (December 15, 1873 – June 8, 1960) was a civic leader and authority on Albemarle County history.

An author and founding member of the Albemarle County Historical Society; in 1950, she was made honorary lifetime president of the historical society.

A member of the Rawlings family, Miss Rawlings was the daughter of the late James Minor Rawlings, D.D., a Presbyterian minister, and Helen Carter Watson Rawlings. She was born December 15, 1873, at the home of her grandfather, Judge Egbert R. Watson, on Park Street.

She attended Miss Carrie Randolph’s “Edgehill School for Girls” while her father was chaplain at the University of Virginia 1886-88.

Publications

• The Albemarle of other days, by Mary Rawlings. (Michie Co., 1925) (page images at HathiTrust); The Michie Company, Publishers; First Edition (January 1, 1925)

• Ante-bellum Albemarle; Albemarle County, Virginia, historical sketches by Mary Rawlings, drawings by H. Heyward and A. Robinson. (The Peoples National Bank, 1935) (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)

• Early Charlottesville; recollections of James Alexander, 1828-1874. (reprinted from the Jeffersonian Republican by the Albemarle County Historical Society; 1942), by James Alexander. (page images at HathiTrust)

• Early Charlottesville architecture. (Charlottesville, Va., 1953), also by Frederick Doveton Nichols, University of Virginia, and Albemarle County Historical Society (Va.) (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)

• Historical guide to old Charlottesville, with mention of its statues and of Albemarle's shrines. (Charlottesville, Va., 1958) (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)

• Historical Guide to Old Charlottesville: With mention of its statues and of Albemarle's shrines, by Mary Rawlings (1958)

• Jeffersonian Republican (editor and publisher)

• Early Charlottesville (1942)