Remembering Rutherford, Daily News Journal, February 21, 2015, Greg Tucker
Two uncommon surnames, Bilbro and Linebaugh, are familiar place names in Rutherford County. The namesake individuals, however, are relatively unknown.
Bilbro
North Bilbro Avenue is the eastern boundary for the Central Magnet School (formerly the Central High School) campus in Murfreesboro. South
The Eaton house, built by the founders of Union University in the 1840s, was the first location of the Mattie V. Linebaugh Library. The address was 815 E. Main St. in Murfreesboro. After the library moved in 1953, the Eaton house was demolished.
Bilbro Avenue runs from East Main Street to Mercury Boulevard.
Berryman H. Bilbro (1823-68) was born and raised in the Milton community in northeast Rutherford. He received a medical degree from the University of Nashville in 1859. A charter member of the Rutherford County Medical Society, he practiced in Milton and was a founder of the Milton Male & Female Seminary.
With his second wife Frances, Berryman Bilbro had one son, William Caldwell Bilbro (1863-1933), who also became a physician. William began his education at the Seminary in Milton, attended Vanderbilt University and received his medical degree from the University of Maryland in 1884.
After working in Milton for three years as a drugstore clerk and school teacher, William Bilbro moved to Murfreesboro and began his medical practice. This practice was interrupted in 1890 when he went to Europe to study medicine in Vienna and London.
Returning to Murfreesboro, Bilbro partnered in practice with Dr. E. M. Holmes from Readyville. He also served for many years as the city health officer and was a founder and president of the Murfreesboro Bank & Trust Company. Bilbro was a Mason, an Elk, a member of the school board, and a Baptist deacon. As an influential member of the church building committee, he oversaw construction of the First Baptist Church structure on East Main in Murfreesboro in 1920.
Bilbro’s wife, the former Florence Nuckolls, acquired several acres on the south side of East Main Street as a gift from her mother in 1895. In or about 1900 the couple built a “palatial limestone rock house” at what became the 900 E. Main St. address. Architecturally unique with fortress-like corner turrets, a columned-front balcony, and a cavernous front-entry arch, the mansion’s exterior was fashioned entirely of cut limestone.
The acreage behind the Bilbro home was eventually developed as the Bilbro Subdivision, and the side street became Bilbro Avenue.
William Bilbro moved to Nashville in 1915 to join in practice with his son, W. C. Bilbro, Jr. The East Main Street home was sold in 1919. In 1938 the Bilbro mansion was purchased and demolished by Nile Yearwood, a Murfreesboro-born Nashville architect. In its place Yearwood built a three-story apartment house (the “Nilewood”), still standing today.
Linebaugh
Before the war, Benjamin E. Linebaugh and his wife, Mattie, lived in a modest frame house on the Bradyville Pike adjacent to the farm of William H. Woods. (Today the Chelsea Apartments occupy what was the road frontage of the Woods farm.) When Tennessee seceded, Linebaugh joined the Confederate military and served in Company F of the 11th Regiment, Tennessee infantry.
During the first occupation of Murfreesboro in 1862, the homes of many known Confederates or “secessionists,” including the Linebaugh home, were burned. With the help of neighbors, a rough log cabin was constructed on the Linebaugh property for Mattie and her battle-wounded husband.
Henry T. Linebaugh was born on Sept. 7, 1865, in his family’s log cabin. In 1867 Benjamin died leaving a wife and three children. In an interview published posthumously in 1948, Henry explained that his family survived by growing and selling fruit — apples, peaches and cherries. Additionally, Henry and his brother Charles worked on the Woods’ farm.
Some of the Linebaugh fruit was sold through the Kerr & Robinson grocery on the square in Murfreesboro, and Henry spent time in the store listening to talk of past activity and future plans. Among those making plans was John Hall Patterson, a local physician.
Dr. Patterson was involved in shipping Florida oranges to Tennessee and reselling the fruit through local grocers. In 1882 he was planning a move to Florida where he would raise and sell citrus fruit. The Linebaugh brothers volunteered to accompany the doctor and to help establish the orange groves.
In 1883, Patterson and the Linebaugh brothers arrived in Auburndale, Florida, where they began clearing land, planting trees, and building needed facilities. Three years later Henry moved to the newly established Ybor City east of Tampa and “worked in a cigar factory for $7 per week.” See “Pioneer Florida” (Southern Publishing Co., 1959), Volume 3. A year later he was working as a bookkeeper at the Ybor City Bank.
As early as December 1886, according to land records, Henry Linebaugh was engaged in land speculation and construction during the land “boom” around Tampa Bay. He noted many years later in correspondence that he built houses, churches and schools, and even financed and built a bridge for the city. Financially successful, Linebaugh was a “Tampa pioneer” remembered for his civic work and philanthropy.
In 1941, reacting to an editorial in the Rutherford Courier, see “Rutherford Ramblings” (RCHS 2014) pages 188-92, Linebaugh offered to loan Murfreesboro $5,000 at 6 percent interest to establish a new public library. When the offer was declined, Linebaugh decided to donate $5000 to establish a library to be named for his mother, Mattie V. Linebaugh. In December 1942 he sent a check for $2,500 (then the maximum allowable charitable tax deduction). A second $2,500 payment was delivered the following year.
Henry T. Linebaugh died on Dec. 7, 1943, at the age of 78. The Mattie V. Linebaugh Library, governed by a state-chartered foundation, opened in Murfreesboro in 1948. The first home for the library was on East Main at North Bilbro Avenue.
A sincere thank you to Mike Liles, Robert G. Ransom and Sam Woods for research assistance.