Remembering Rutherford, Daily News Journal, October 25, 2014, Gregg Tucker
Recently, the owners of Celtic Marble & Granite, 115 N. Walnut St. in Murfreesboro, found the stone memorial buried under an old inventory of stone left behind by a previous owner. The stone was intact with names and dates legible from the 1900s to the early 1930s.
Elks’ Stone Tablet Odyssey – a Rutherford mystery
The stone tablet apparently survived a move and a demolition, but ran out of engraving space five years before the demise of the Elks.
Lodge No. 1029 of the Brotherhood & Protective Order of Elks (BPOE), known locally as simply “the Elks Club,” was chartered in Murfreesboro in 1906. The first club house was at 114 East College Street.
In 1914 the Elks built their second clubhouse at 109 North Spring Street, and the College Street building became the home of the Woodfin & Moore funeral home. (The building has since housed the Murfreesboro Little Theater and a series of restaurants. Today owned by T. Wright Properties, it is occupied by the Milanos II restaurant.) In 1938 the local Elks surrendered their charter and the Spring Street building was transferred to the Stones River Club, an exclusive club for local businessmen. When the Stones River Club evolved into the Stones River Country Club and moved to the new facility on NE Broad, the city of Murfreesboro acquired the Spring Street property.
Over the next several decades, the old Elks Club building on Spring Street housed the Linebaugh Library (1953-62), administrative offices for the city school system (1963-72), and the Rutherford County Guidance Center (1973-85). The property was sold to T. Wright Properties in 1986 with the condition that the new owner demolish the building within 90 days after taking possession. The property is now an open parking lot.
At some time during its first decade, the local Elks apparently decided to memorialize the deaths of their members by engraving the names and year of death on a marble slab. The earliest date engraved on the stone is 1908, so the memorial may have been mounted in the East College building. The stone could also have been prepared and dedicated after the move to the Spring Street building with names added at that time for those who had predeceased.
The circumstances of the stone after the demise of the Elks in 1938 may remain a mystery. Taylor Wright of T. Wright Properties is confident that the memorial slab was not in the building when his firm acquired the property. Fortunately, someone had carefully removed and salvaged the memorial stone.
Recently, the owners of Celtic Marble & Granite, 115 North Walnut Street in Murfreesboro, found the stone memorial buried under an old inventory of stone left behind by a previous owner. The stone was intact with names and dates legible from the 1900s to the early 1930s.
When advised of the stone’s historical significance, Chris and Belinda Fretwell, the Celtic firm owners since 2006, agreed to give the stone to the Rutherford County Historical Society (RCHS) for display and preservation. The Fretwells sold their firm to Michael Morley earlier this year, and the new owner provided the equipment and manpower to move the heavy memorial stone.
Today, the slab is on permanent display in the RCHS offices at 717 North Academy Street (the location of the Ransom School Museum).
The surnames on the memorial include many early Rutherford County families, as well as the county leadership during the era of the Elks Club.
George W. Todd, first on the list, died in 1908 at the age of 31. He was a pharmacist from the Rucker community and one of the charter members of Lodge 1029. Another doctor of pharmacology, J. H. Nelson, owned and operated the county’s first electric plant.
He bought the plant in 1901 for $15,000, sold it in 1908 for $41,500 and died in 1921.
Another name at the top of the stone memorial is James W. Primm who died in 1909 before the end of his term as county sheriff. His successor, J.T. McKnight, listed near the bottom of the stone, died in 1933.
Several Murfreesboro postmasters are named on the memorial including Z.T. Cason (died 1913) and J.H. Crichlow.
The latter also served as Murfreesboro mayor (1900-10) and for many years as the president of the city Board of Education.
The name of the first Murfreesboro public school was changed to Crichlow Grammar School in tribute to this education pioneer upon his death in 1922. Another Elk and contemporary of Cason and Crichlow, N.C. Collier, was a founder and first president of the Rutherford Fair Association that produced the first county fairs in the 1880’s. Collier died in 1915.
J.C. Ransom (died 1917) and A.M. Overall (died 1922) were squires on the Quarterly Court that significantly changed the look of the antebellum courthouse in 1908-10.
Ransom chaired the courthouse committee that contracted in 1908 to install a third floor, flatten the roof, add “gingerbread” trim and completely redesign the cupola.
Overall chaired the committee that supervised completion of the work, including installation of a steam heat system in 1910. (Not everyone was pleased. A few years later the afternoon newspaper noted “the inherent beauty” of the courthouse “despite the ugliness of that abortion of a tower and those outlandish curved windows and the gingerbread across the roof edges.”) Another city mayor (1923-31) memorialized by the Elks was Al D. McKnight. After his death in 1931, Murfreesboro named a street in his honor on what was then the northern boundary of the city.
Elks Club (1923) located at 109 North Spring Street, Murfreesboro, TN
The Elk’s stone tablet also evidences the toll that automobile accidents took on some of the more prominent local families. Aaron W. Todd, the 21-year-old son of Tennessee House of Representative Speaker Andrew L. Todd, was killed in a “tragic automobile accident in Kentucky” in 1923. His parents donated the organ at the First Baptist Church of Murfreesboro in honor of their son.
James R. Jetton, Jr., “member of the younger set of this city, and member of one of the county’s most prominent families…was killed in a morning automobile crash near Woodbury” in 1931. The senior Jetton was president of the Rutherford County State Bank, owned and opera ted the city waterworks, operated the James K. Polk Hotel, practiced law and served in both the Tennessee House and Senate.
Charles P. Crichlow, 26, and Boyd W. Kerr, 24, were killed in 1927 when a Tennessee Central train hit their car at a crossing north of Lebanon. These young Elks were en route to Horn Springs to attend a dance. Described in the media as “Murfreesboro favorite sons,” they were “known to practically everyone in the city and were universally popular.” A joint funeral was conducted for these “inseparable friends.”
The last two names on the stone memorial are physicians — Dr. B.N. White and Dr. W.C. Bilbro. Both died in 1933.
White was a secondgeneration physician, headed the local Boy Scout organization, and was an early advocate of efforts to clean up “the Bottoms” (Murfreesboro’s notorious slum).
Bilbro studied medicine in Nashville (Vanderbilt University), Maryland, London and Vienna. He served on the medical faculties at the University of Tennessee and the University of the South.
In 1900, the physician/ professor built a “palatial limestone rock house” on the corner of what is now East Main and Bilbro Avenue. (This architecturally unique home was demolished in 1938. The site is now an apartment building at 900 East Main.) The Elks may have simply run out of space on the memorial stone.
The last entries are dated 1933 while the club continued through 1938.
The Elks Club memorial stone was recently found and is now preserved on display at the Rutherford County Historical Society office.