Donald Rawson

Donald Moses Rawson (August 22, 1925 – October 10, 2014) was an American historian known for his scholarship of the 19th century United States. For twenty years, the Mississippi native Rawson was a faculty member at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. For another four years, he was the Dean of the Graduate School.

Rawson and his twin brother, Denver Wyatt Rawson, were born in the ghost town of Dossville in Leake County in central Mississippi northeast of the capital city of Jackson. After high school, Rawson entered the United States Army and served from 1943 to 1946 in both the European and Pacific theaters.

Thereafter, he completed both bachelor's and master's degrees in history from Mississippi State University in Starkville. He taught at the junior college level during the 1950s and in 1964 completed his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.His dissertation is entitled Party Politics in Mississippi, 1850–1860.

In 1960, Rawson, his wife, and their two daughters relocated to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he joined the history department of Northwestern State University. Mrs. Rawson, the former Vera McKay (December 30, 1928 – February 22, 2014), a Dossville, Mississippi, native and the daughter of Amzie Lamar McKay, Sr., and the former Annie Blanche Jennings, taught mathematics for eighteen years at NSU.

Rawson was the NSU history department chairman from 1972 until 1980, when then president Rene Bienvenu named him Dean of the Graduate School, with Marietta LeBreton taking over as history chairman. This was Rawson's final position until retirement at the age of fifty-nine in the summer of 1984.

Rawson was an authority on middle-period American history, with emphasis on the U.S. South, and authored numerous articles for scholarly and professional journals, such as "Democratic Resurgence in Mississippi, 1852–1853" in the Journal of Mississippi History.He wrote about the Natchitoches Parish naturalist Caroline Dormon.Rawson was a member of the Southern Historical Association, the Mississippi Historical Association, and the Southern Studies Institute, which is based at NSU. He was a board member and president of both the Louisiana Historical Association and the North Louisiana Historical Association, which publish, respectively the journals, Louisiana History and North Louisiana History.

Rawson resided in Natchitoches from 1960 to 2013, when he relocated to Alexandria, Louisiana, where he died in the fall of 2014 at the age of 89.

Rawson, his wife, parents, and other family members are interred at Parkway Cemetery in Kosciusko in Attala County, Mississippi. He was a Presbyterian.