The Baillet House
Oldest Building In Tullahoma
The Baillet House, which serves as part of the Tullahoma Fine Arts Center, is reportedly the oldest building in Tullahoma, Tennessee. Part of the structure dates to the founding of the city in 1852. Oral tradition holds that the building was used as a hospital by both the Confederate and Union forces during the American Civil War.
The Baillet family built an Italianate home at the site using bricks from the Lupher brickyard in 1868. The house, located at 401 South Jackson Street, sits across from land that the Tullahoma founders had originally planned as the town's square. The town's center actually developed several blocks north of the area, where three of the Baillet sisters owned and operated a millinery shop until 1913.
One hundred years later the Baillet home was restored by volunteers interested in preserving the historic building as a center for the arts.
The Baillet Sisters
During the aftermath of the Civil War, Jennie, Emma and Affa Baillet accompanied their parents on a journey from Cattaraugus County, New York, to their new home in Tullahoma.
When the sisters arrived in 1868, Tullahoma was a small southern town in the midst of Reconstruction. Founded in 1852 on the Nashville-Chattanooga Railroad, it had been a strategic location during the war and served as the headquarters and main supply depot for the Army of Tennessee in 1863. It was later occupied by Northern forces and placed under military law.
The Baillet sisters quickly adapted to their new surroundings, became prominent members of the community and opened a millinery shop, one of the first businesses in town owned by women.
Artists and Political Activists
Art played a vital role in the Baillet sisters’ lives, being one of the few acceptable activities for women in the nineteenth century. Their original art works were often given to friends as gifts. Some of these paintings are part of the Art Center's permanent collection. In addition to art, according to contemporary newspaper accounts, the sisters were deeply involved in “political affairs, public reforms and progressive movements of all kinds.” And they were well respected for their “many deeds of charity.” Among the many causes championed by the Baillets were those of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Equal Suffrage League. Never marrying, the sisters lived together in the Baillet home until the last sister’s death in 1934.
Jane "Jennie" Baillet — born Dec. 1, 1834, died Oct. 1, 1918. Emma Baillet — born 1838, died 1926. Buried in Tullahoma's Oakwood Cemetery. Affa Baillet — born 1850, died 1934. They are all buried in the Tullahoma's Oakwood Cemetery.
Obituary: Jennie Baillet
Miss Jennie Baillet, for fifty years a resident of Tullahoma, died at her home Oct. 1, 1918. She was born Dec. 1, 1834 at Farmersville, Cattaraugus County, N.Y., and in 1868 came with her father and other members of the family to Tullahoma.
Soon after coming here, she and her sisters opened a millinery and dress making establishment, which for many years was one of the important business houses of Tullahoma. From the beginning of her residence in Tullahoma, Miss Baillet took a prominent part in the activities of the town and was recognized as a very unusual woman. In addition to business ability and sound judgment in all practical affairs she had, literary and artistic tastes wide information, a remarkable memory and magnetic personality.
Perhaps her strongest leaning was toward political affairs, public reforms and progressive movements of all kinds. Her interest in these she retained until the day of her death.
Older residents of the town remember her many deeds of charity, her sympathy for those in distress and the valuable service she rendered as a pioneer worker in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Equal Suffrage League.
For the past several years she had been so frail physically that she was shut in most of the time but she bore her infirmities uncomplainingly and her mind remained clear, her spirit courageous to the end, when she went gladly to "greet the unseen."
Surviving her are her sisters, Misses Emma and Affa Baillet of Tullahoma, a niece, Mrs. Mary Wade Barr, of Colorado Springs, Col., and two nephews, Frank Baillet of Limestone, NY, and Harry M. Lupher of Chattanooga, Tenn., now in service in France.