Connie Esh, Murfreesboro Post, November 10, 2015
Nancy Morris loves historic old houses, and she owns four of them in Murfreesboro. She lives in one at the corner of Maney and Main, which will be the first stop on this year’s annual Christmas Candlelight Tour of Homes Dec. 5, from 4-8 p.m.
Nancy Morris keeps everything as authentic as she can at her historic home at Maney and Main, including her statuary like this neo-Classical goddess of wine, bearing grapes, that graces the yard in front of her brick-columned pergola. CONNIE ESH /The Murf
Morris restores her old homes. She knows and collects some really spooky ghost stories about them. And she rents out the three that she doesn’t live in as apartments, for a living – but she also rents them out for a reason.
“I think giving young people a chance to live in these old homes and be charmed by them will give them a taste for living in historic homes,” she says.
Morris hasn’t turned single-family homes into apartments herself, however. One of the three historic houses that she owns was actually built as a quad-plex, while the other two were converted before Morris bought them.
‘Love at first sight’ of homes
She acquired her taste for living in historic homes on a trip to Denver with her late husband Larry Morris, who was a psychology professor at MTSU.
“Many, many years ago, I toured downtown Denver,” she explains. “We saw the ‘Unsinkable’ Molly Brown’s home. I knew right away I wanted to live in an old house.”
Brown, of course, is the most famous Titanic survivor, whose actions to save other passengers and flamboyant personality made her the heroine of a hit 1960s musical on Broadway starring Debbie Reynolds.
She also was an early feminist politician and ran a soup kitchen for needy miners’ families. But the fabulous Victorian, Queen Anne-style mansion Brown bought with her husband, who struck it rich in gold and silver mining, also made the “Unsinkable” Molly “unforgettable” – or at least it did for Nancy Morris.
The Woodbury native says she and her family lived in a subdivision at the time they toured Molly Brown’s mansion, but she decided then and there that she wanted an older house.
“I found out I could buy old houses and rent apartments in them to interesting people,” she continues.
Home replaced Polk Hotel
Morris soon started to do exactly that, and her apartments paid off – so she could also buy the home where she now lives at 347 East Main, which is entirely furnished with period antiques she mostly has found locally.
“Jimmy Jetton made this house into a tourist home when they closed the James K. Polk Hotel,” she says.
Shortly after she bought the house, she met Jetton’s daughter Sissy, who by then was in her 90s.
“She told me the dining room paneling was solid cherry,” Morris says. “She also said there used to be a fish pond where my flowerbed is now, but they filled it in because all the neighborhood dogs would come and play in the water.”
That was in the 1930s, and Morris explains that many of the houses in the historic district along East Main had fish ponds at that time.
Restored authentic pergola
Landscaping is her favorite occupation, Morris says, and her yards reflect that. Each house has shrubs, flowers and trees she has planted, and in each case she tries to be sure they’re the types of things that would traditionally be there.
Her home yard features a pergola – with wisteria growing over it – which she restored.
“The pergola was as it is now in a 1910 photo,” she says. But when she bought the house, only two of the pergola’s eight columns were still standing.
“We had it rebuilt to match Sissy’s picture,” Morris says. The contractors used bricks salvaged from the rest of the yard to do the job, too.
The original house was much smaller, however. Jimmy Jetton added the second story and expanded the main floor in 1910, according to Morris.
‘Spooky things start happening’
Morris also had the inside restored to its 1910 state, removing walls and eliminating extra kitchens. While that was going on, unusual things started happening in the house.
“We found a little pair of shoes in the rafters, placed there to keep spirits away,” she says. “The roofers removed them and things started happening, unusual noises and spigots coming on, things like that, until we placed them back.”
She says the shoes are old worn-out shoes, possibly belonging to a servant or slave.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the Morris family also would smell coffee brewing and breakfast cooking.
“While we were working on the house, these things happened,” she recalls. “You disturb the status quo, and things happen. I love that feature of an old house.”
‘Union officer’s home’
Her rental house at 223 Lytle is one of the oldest houses in Murfreesboro, Morris says. It’s the Doughtry House, so called because after the Battle of Stones River, a Union captain who had been seriously wounded in the battle came back to Murfreesboro and bought the house.
Capt. W. N. Doughtry lived in the house for many years and founded the First National Bank.
When Morris bought that house, it had been converted to a quad-plex and all the ceilings had been lowered. She removed the newer ceilings and restored the old high ceilings, as well as restoring the rest of the home, but left the apartments and rented them.
Her third house, at 415 East Main, is a Tudor-style house originally built as a quad-plex by Sarah Spence. It is said to be the first quad-plex ever built in Murfreesboro.
‘Ladies only’
Morris says Spence built the house so she could live in one section and rent the others “to her friends. Only ladies could live there.”
The fourth house that Morris owns, an antebellum home at 1810 East Main, was actually her first house. She replaced the maple trees in the front yard when they were storm-damaged recently.
She also has maple trees in her own side yard “from the woods near Woodbury,” she says.
Morris says she really enjoys “fixing up houses so young people can enjoy the historic charm.”
She also enjoys her children and grandchildren, who all live in Atlanta. Her son Wayne recently earned his MBA from MTSU and returned to Atlanta while her daughter, Jennifer Roberts, married only last week.
‘Playhouse under stairs’
Morris quips that she’s “on call” to watch her son Scott’s three children on holidays and breaks. In fact, she has created an under-the-stairs playhouse for them in her front hall.
The space under the stairs was originally a small storage closet, but it now contains children’s toys and small furniture. It’s a perfect hide-a-way for visiting grandchildren.
And maybe it’s a way to get them fascinated by historic old houses, too. Nancy Morris, a remarkable Rutherford woman and landlord, can only hope.
Writer Connie Esh can be contacted at [email protected].