Garrott House

Built by transplanted Ohioan George Case for his wife’s sister and her family, this three-bay braced frame house is the oldest surviving residential building in Batesville. The one-and-a-half-story central-hall house, with end chimneys, has four rooms downstairs and two upstairs. When the original occupants left for California in 1853, Case gained ownership of the house, and after his death, it passed on to his oldest daughter and then to her descendants. By the 1880s, the house had been updated with a stone kitchen attached to the rear by a (now-enclosed) porch. A gabled dormer was added above the front door, and it is possible that the house’s distinctive decorative bargeboards were added to the roofline at this time. Inside, the house retains its original random-width, heart pine floors, hand-planed woodwork, including one original mantel. The house’s name is identified with the Reverend E. P. J. Garrott, pastor of the First Baptist church, who in 1944 moved in and used it as a parsonage. After owners Terrell and Diane Tebbetts acquired the house in 1990, they found a scrap of 1880s wallpaper in the attic during the restoration and had it reproduced and installed in the parlor.