MURFREESBORO FEMALE INSTITUTE 1875 – 1899 is shown on the 1878 Beers Map as located between High and Maney and bordering Burton Streets. The location of the building currently would be 421 East Bell Street. MURFREESBORO FEMALE INSTITUTE, also known as the SCOBEY SCHOOL, used the same property which the Trustees of EATON COLLEGE or TENNESSEE BAPTIST INSTITUTE had bought from James Maney on September 13, 1869.
The picture of the building made in 1875 shows the building. It was a 50 x 80 foot, two-story, brick structure and had accommodations for 100 students.
James E. Scobey was the principal.
Mr. E. C. Cox, in whose honor the COX MEMORIAL building was named and who was first superintendent of city schools, was a professor of mathematics and history.
When MURFREESBORO FEMALE INSTITUTE closed, Judge Edwin H.
Ewing bought the building. In 1899 he gave the house as a wedding present to his daughter Florence and her husband Daniel P. Perkins, a former Confederate soldier and lumberman. The old ‘L’ was torn away and the home underwent extensive repairs.
Mr. Perkins became known as ‘Daddy Dan’ and the house, the ‘Perkins House.’ Later it was occupied by Mrs. J. B. Kirk whose grandson Thomas Cook found “schoolgirl scribblings under a layer of wallpaper.” The building was still later owned by Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Reed who converted it into an apartment house.
The building is no longer standing. A doctor’s office and its parking area are now at that location.
SOURCES: Deed Book, p. 487. “City and County Schools Are among Most Modern,” The Daily News Journal, April 6, 1952, p. 25. *Homer Pittard, ed., Griffith Bicentennial Commission, 1976), Mary B. Hughes, Hearthstones Murfreesboro: Mid-South Publishing Co., 1942, pp. 34, 51. *Florence Cox McFerrin.