Murfreesboro Women’s Clubit is Legacy Gathering will take place on July 23, 2022, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The fundraising event will celebrate the founding of the Woman’s Club, the creation of its historic library, and their continued support of literacy programs in the community. This year marks the 106th anniversary of the club.

History of the club building

On the corner of North Academy and East College Street, the club is housed in a two-story gray Italianate building with cream-colored arched columns. The house was originally built by Dr. Robert Turner Baskette in 1856 for his second wife, Helen M. Crichlow. In 1916, five women took out a mortgage of $6,125 to buy the house to serve as a meeting place for various women’s organizations and to have a cohesive place to store their organization’s collection of over 2,000 books which formed Murfreesboro’s first library. Their husbands said they could never pay – once they told them. Women have done it in five years. The Women’s Club of Murfreesboro has owned the house ever since.

Now on the National Historic Register, the original house plans were 6,000 square feet under a nearly flat roof, with wide eaves and massive supports. Baskette contractor Samuel Richard Sanders created 12-inch-thick solid brick interior and exterior walls extending to the roof frame. Inside, the brick was finished with plaster. The foundation is a combination of a stepped brick base and native limestone blocks. The house was originally red brick.

Italian was the most popular house style in the United States from 1840 to 1885. These mansions evoke the romantic villas of Renaissance Italy. With the ability to be constructed with many different building materials, the style could suit a wide range of budgets.

“There were fewer Italianate buildings in the southern states because the style reached its peak during the Civil War,” said former Women’s Club president Jackie Jenkins, “at a time when the South was economically devastated”.

According to information provided to the club by Miss Rebecca Jetton, who resided in the house years ago, where the rafter can be seen in the ceiling of the meeting room, the west porch once began and extended to the current service room. The kitchen was at the northwest end of the porch. The east part of the assembly hall was the dining hall with service rooms and a pantry to the north. The current library and dining room were bedrooms. The floor had four large rooms without partitions except for a dressing room on the north side of the large room above the present meeting room.

As in many elegant houses of the period and region, there are secret rooms. Two rooms are under the current dining room, library and living room. The hidden rooms are accessed through an 18-inch square hatch hidden under the oriental rug in the dining room.

“It is theorized that these rooms below ground may have been used as root cellars and/or storage of valuables,” Jenkins added. “Similar pits exist beneath Oaklands Mansion, where access and use have also not been determined.”

The house originally had no porch on the front and east sides. It is said that the fourth owner of the house, a Mr. James M. Haynes, had the porches built so that he could exercise. According to Woman’s Club records, he had poor eyesight and disliked going out on the streets. Ornate grilles covered the first floor windows and a beautifully crafted wooden door adorned the College Street entrance.

Layout of the women’s club

Currently filled with an assortment of antiques from the late 1800s through the 1950s, the most notable piece is the desk and chair that once belonged to Mary Noailles Murfree. Murfree was a famous fiction writer from Appalachia in the late 19e and early 20e centuries who wrote under the name of Charles Egbert Craddock. This is a 1910 oak “S” double pedestal desk with an evanescent typewriter surface and an oak flat back chair. It is set up in a vignette as it might have been in its time.

Murfree’s office is in the library, which was the first room the women who started the club remodeled. They added floor-to-ceiling shelving to provide permanent housing for literary materials belonging to their organization, the Murfreesboro Library Association.

Their collection of books has grown over the years to over 4,000 volumes, including a number of early additions, rare and out-of-print books, and materials used by local historians for research projects. Other books feature local authors such as Will Allen Dromgoole, Andrew Lytle, Ed Bell, Grantland Rice, Annie C. and Neal D. Frazier, Elizabeth Ridley, Dr. Homer Pittard, Dr. Robert Corlew, Elwin “Wink” Midgett, Francis S Brandon, Sara Cannon, Bob Womack and the complete works of Mary Noailles Murfree. Early additions include an 1893 leather-bound folio collection of nude reproductions by some of the world’s greatest master painters and Dante’s Inferno.

The Murfreesboro Library Association has moved the contents of its library many times since its beginnings in 1887 as the Helen Hunt Jackson Reading Club. They operated the first public lending library in 1889 and were formally incorporated in 1911. Its complete volume collection was moved to the Woman’s Club building in 1916, and it operated as the county’s lending library until 1948 when the Linebaugh Public Library was established. . The members of the Woman’s Club of Murfreesboro have chosen not to merge their books with the new Linebaugh Library, but they continue to offer their members selections from the shelves for their reading pleasure. They also support the Linebaugh Library to this day.

The Club’s renovations over the years have revealed many unusual features, but when the roof was replaced, one of the strangest was discovered. Workers discovered a 3-inch-wide, 7-1/2-inch-long Confederate mortar shell lodged between bricks in one of six chimneys. It was verified by a Civil War expert as genuine, and it was still fully loaded with over 150 cc’s of gunpowder. They had the gunpowder removed and it is now in the library.

Art from other local artists hangs throughout the house, including the meeting room. Behind the mahogany piano with ivory keys hang watercolor sunflowers in a blaze of yellow and green by Frances Vaughan. The grand piano was purchased in 1927 and has been there ever since. Other artwork by Clarice Nelson, who started the Murfreesboro Art League, and Maxine Henderson also hang in the meeting room. Much of the art and furniture collection was donated by past presidents of the club. It was also a tradition for them to give the club a tea set to use at their fundraising teas.

The women’s club was designed to be shared

Over the years, the club has opened its facilities to various community groups for meetings, receptions, showers, dinners and lunches in their meeting room, where they will celebrate the Legacy Gathering.

From the beginning, it had been purchased not only to house books, but also to provide a permanent meeting place for other women’s groups, including the Murfreesboro Equal Suffrage League and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

In recent years, the club has hosted the Middle Tennessee State University College of Education Dean’s Reception, Symphony Guild Breakfast, Tennessee Regional Garden Club, Friends of Linebaugh Library Annual Meeting, and various other groups. Additionally, the house was opened for the Candlelight Christmas Tour and Taste of Rutherford.

The members also hosted their own special events, including past performances by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; Metropolitan Opera star Camilla Pansell; and Bruno Steindal, cellist formerly of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Most recently, Murfreesboro native and NASA astronaut Rhea Seddon hosted a book signing and spoke to the club about her career. Members and guests can also take advantage of their annual events for various seasonal parties and luncheons.

Providing food and shelter is part of the club’s history

Keeping members and guests fed over the years has recently been taken over by caterers, but once upon a time there were servants, including a home chef named Charles Jordan. Jordan lived in an apartment on the second floor. There are stories of him sitting in a chair on the porch offering freshly made lemonade to passers-by on hot days.

When the public health system was just getting started in the 1920s, Red Cross nurse Maud Ferguson lived in one of the second-floor apartments. Ferguson set up a child health demonstration project that dramatically reduced infant and maternal mortality.

Celebrating 106 Years of Community Service

The legacy celebration will honor the long history that began with the Civil War. Dr. Robert Turner Baskette, the original owner, was a Confederate surgeon and was captured and imprisoned three times during the war. His wife, Helen M. Crichlow was the grandmother of Newton Collier Crichlow, a former mayor of Murfreesboro. “It is said that James H. Crichlow, father of Newton Collier Crichlow, sold pies in the kitchen to the Union soldiers camped there,” Jenkins said.

Just as the past will be honored, so will the future of the Club. They plan to expand their literacy activities. “This [plan] is multi-pronged and includes the Reading Buddies Project in partnership with Murfreesboro Fire Rescue, Rescue Readers in partnership with Rutherford County Fire Rescue, Cold Patrol Initiative in partnership with St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and First Baptist Church, the Community Baby Shower in partnership with United Way and a scholarship program in partnership with MTSU,” Jenkins said. All projects put books in the hands of children and adults.

The Woman’s Club of Murfreesboro has worked over the years to provide a comfortable place for women in Murfreesboro and the surrounding area to come together and share in civic, social and charitable activities. Over the past five years, the Club has evolved to become more capable of change and more active in reaching out to the community at large, while remaining connected to its mission.

“While our goal and objectives remain to provide literary and cultural activities to women of all backgrounds,” added Jenkins, “we are embracing new technologies and techniques to achieve these goals. And we seek to provide programs and activities to attract younger and more diverse populations of women.

For more information, contact the Club here.