The Women’s Club of Murfreesboro’s Legacy Gathering will take place on July 23, 2022, from 5:30 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 ongoing 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 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 for $6,125 to buy the home to act as a meeting place for various women’s organizations, and to have a consistent place to store their organization’s collection of over 2,000 books that formed the first Murfreesboro library. Their husbands said they’d never be able to pay it off – once they told them. The women did it in five years. The Women’s Club of Murfreesboro has owned the home ever since.
Now on the National Historic Register, the original house plans were for 6,000 square feet under a nearly flat roof, with wide eaves, and massive brackets. Baskette’s contractor, Samuel Richard Sanders, created 12-inch thick solid brick interior and exterior walls extending all the way to the roof framing. Inside, the brick was finished with plaster. The foundation is a combination of a stepped brick base and blocks of native limestone. The house was originally red brick.
Italianate was the most popular style of home in the United States from 1840-1885. These homes suggested the romantic villas of Renaissance Italy. With the ability to be constructed of many different building materials, the style could be adapted to 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 past Women’s Club President, Jackie Jenkins, “a time when the South was economically devastated.”
According to information given to the club by Miss Rebecca Jetton, who resided in the house years ago, where the rafter can be seen in the ceiling in the Assembly Room, the west porch once began and extended to the present serving room. The kitchen was at the northwest end of the porch. The east part of the assembly room was the dining room with serving rooms and a pantry to the north. The present library and dining room were bedrooms. The upstairs had four large bedrooms with no partitions except for a dressing room on the north side of the large room above the current Assembly Room.
As with many elegant houses of the time and in the area, there are secret rooms. Two rooms lie underneath the current dining room, library, and parlor. The hidden rooms can be accessed through an 18-inch square trap door hidden under the dining room’s oriental area rug.
“It is theorized that these rooms beneath the floor were possibly used as root cellars and/or as storage for valuables,” added Jenkins. “Similar pits exist under Oaklands Mansion, where access and usage also has not been determined.”
Originally, the house had no porch on the front and east sides. It is said that the fourth owner of the home, a Mr. James M. Haynes, had the porches built so he could exercise. According to Woman’s Club records, he had poor eyesight and he did not like to get on the street. Ornate grates covered the first-floor windows, and a beautifully crafted wooden door graced the College Street entrance.
Furnishing the Women’s Club
Currently filled with an assortment of antiques from the late 1800s until the 1950s, the most outstanding piece is the desk and chair once belonging to Mary Noailles Murfree. Murfree was a famous writer of Appalachian fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who wrote under the name Charles Egbert Craddock. It is a 1910 Oak “S” roll top double pedestal desk with a vanishing typewriter surface, and an oak splat-back chair. It is set up in a vignette as it might have been in her day.
Murfree’s desk sits in the library, which was the first room the women who started the club remodeled. They added floor to ceiling bookshelves to provide a permanent home for the literary materials owned by their organization, The Murfreesboro Library Association.
Their book collection grew over the years to more than 4,000 volumes, including a number of first additions, rare and out of print books, and documents used by local historians for research projects. Other books represent 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. The first additions include an 1893 leather bound folio collection of reproductions of nudes by some of the world’s greatest painting masters, and Dante’s Inferno.
The Murfreesboro Library Association has moved the contents of its library numerous times since its beginning in 1887 as the Helen Hunt Jackson Reading Club. They operated the first public lending library in 1889, and officially incorporated in 1911. Its complete collection of volumes was moved to The Woman’s Club building in 1916, and it operated as the lending library for the county until 1948, when Linebaugh Public Library was formed. Members of the Woman’s Club of Murfreesboro chose not to merge their books with the newly formed 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.
Renovations to the Club over the years have turned up many unusual items, but when the roof was being replaced, one of the oddest was discovered. Workers discovered a 3-inch-wide, 7 1/2-inch-long Confederate Read Mortar Shell lodged between the bricks in one of the six chimneys. It was verified by a Civil War expert as authentic, and it was still fully loaded with over 150 cc of gunpowder. They had the gunpowder removed and it now sits in the library.
Art by other local artists hangs throughout the house, including the Assembly 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 located there ever since. Other pieces of art by Clarice Nelson, who started the Murfreesboro Art League, and Maxine Henderson also hang in the Assembly Room. Much of the collection of art and furnishings has been donated by past presidents of the club. It was also a tradition for them to give the club a tea service to use at their fundraising teas.
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 luncheons in their Assembly Room, where they will be celebrating the Legacy Gathering.
From the beginning, it had been purchased to not only house books, but to provide a permanent meeting place for other women’s groups, including the Murfreesboro Equal Suffrage League and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Recent years have seen the club host the Middle Tennessee State University College of Education’s Dean’s Reception, the Symphony Guild Breakfast, the Tennessee Regional Garden Club, the yearly meeting of Friends of Linebaugh Library, and various other groups. In addition, the home has been opened for the Christmas Candlelight tour and Taste of Rutherford.
Members have also hosted their own special events including past performances from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; Camilla Pansell, a Metropolitan Opera star; and Bruno Steindal, a violin-cellist formerly with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. More recently, Murfreesboro native and NASA astronaut Rhea Seddon held a book signing and spoke at the club regarding her career. Members and guests can also enjoy their annual events for various holidays and seasonal luncheons.
Providing Food and Shelter Part of Club’s History
Keeping members and guests fed over the years has recently been attended to by caterers, but once upon a time there were servants, including a live-in chef named Charles Jordan. Jordan lived in an apartment on the second floor. There are stories of him sitting in a chair on the front porch where he offered fresh-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 established a child health demonstration project that dramatically decreased infant and mother 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 jailed 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 back in the kitchen to the Union soldiers encamped there,” said Jenkins.
Just as the past will be honored, so will the future of the Club. They are planning to expand their literacy outreach. “This [plan] is multi-pronged and includes the Reading Buddies Project in partnership with Murfreesboro Fire Rescue, the Rescue Readers in partnership with Rutherford County Fire Rescue, the 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,” said Jenkins. All of the projects get books into 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 surrounding areas to come together to share civic, social and charitable activities. Over the past five years, the Club has moved towards becoming more adept at change and more active in reaching out to the community at large, while keeping connected to their mission.
“While our purpose and goals remain to provide literary and cultural activities for women from all walks of life,” added Jenkins, “we are embracing new technologies and techniques for reaching those goals. And, we are seeking to provide programs and activities to attract younger and more diverse populations of women.”
For more information, contact the Club here.
