Mountain Home

Mountain Home

Through the efforts by Tennessee Congressman Walter Preston Brownlow and others, in 1901 Congress approved a bill introduced by Brownlow to establish a national home in the Johnson City area. A designated board of managers chose a 450-acre site and commissioned New York architect J. H. Freedlander to design 36 French Renaissance-style buildings. The home opened Oct. 15, 1903. From the US Department of Veteran Affairs)

John Francis M Bails

On September 25, 1863 John M Bails, Rank: Privt , enlisted in the 8th Cavalry Regiment Company I , mustered 13 November 1863 at Mossy Creek. While John was stationed near Nashville, he became very ill and there were no doctors in his camp.  His fellow soldiers treated  him with turpentine and as a result John suffered permanent kidney damage.  After the war his health problems continued and there are stories in his pension application file of John being so sick while out working in the fields that his friends would send for his Mother who would come down to the field and care for him. He continued to work as much as he could and on March 11, 1866, he married Delphia Ann Coldwell. John and Delphia had seven children that grew to adulthood: Joseph Bingmon Bailes (1867-1922), Julia A Bailes (1871- unknown), Benjamin Franklin Bails (1874-1921), James Ruble Bailes (1878-1960), Mary Molly Lucretia Bailes (1882- unknown) and Thomas Manon Bailes (1885-1975). 

A few years after his wife died John was admitted to the hospital at Mountain Home where he died on October 19, 1914.  He is buried in the cemetery on the grounds.

John Bails Headstone at Mountain Home Cemetery

James Ruble Bailes

James Ruble Bailes was born on August 22, 1878 in Baileyton, Tennessee. On August 12 1898, he enlisted in CO F of the 8th Infantry and was sent to Puerto Rico during the Spanish American War.  On August 16, 1903, he married Martha Elizabeth White and they had the following children who grew to adulthood ( the had at least three who did not survive): Minnie Evelyn Eva Bailes (1904-1974), Walter Randolph Bailes (1907-1957), William Howard Bailes (1909-1942), Lillian Geraldine Bailes (1913-2002), Henry Kenneth Bailes (1916-1997), Carl Ruble Bailes (1918-1991), Eleanor Hassie Bailes (1920-2011), Hartsell Luther Bailes (1921-1945), Frank White Bailes (1923-2003) and Uncle Bob (1925- ).  Walter Randolph Bailes, Carl Ruble Bailes, Hartsell Luther Bailes, Frank White Bailes, Uncle Bob and future son-in-law Carl Lee Everett served in Worl War II. HL Bailes was killed in Luzon, Phillipines on May 30, 1945.

In 1911, both John Bailes and his son James Ruble were hospitalized at Mountain Home. James Ruble and Martha Elizabeth White Bailes moved to Knoxville around 1917.  Not long after his wife died in 1957, James Ruble Bailes went to the hospital at Mountain Home where he died on the January 24, 1960.  He is buried next to his wife in Lynnhurst Cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee.