05/31/2026
Love the History!
💚 When we were out in Elizabethtown a week and a half ago, another stop for my book was the Brown-Pusey house, located in their historic downtown district. It took a bit, but the chapter for this home is now complete! I've also finished the blog post on my website, BUT I didn't include everything from my book in this post! Ha, ha! (Insert evil laugh 🤣) You'll have to wait for the book to be published to get even more history of John Y. Hill and even more photos of the home! For now, here's the story...
💛 I came across the Brown-Pusey House a few years ago when scrolling through my Facebook blog page. You know how Facebook will “feed you” pages that you don’t actually follow, but typically will be similar to pages that you do follow or posts you have liked. Well, the Brown-Pusey house was fed to me through the Elizabethtown Tourism page. I read about their downtown summer evening tours and had wanted to attend for quite some time. I never made it to the downtown tour, because evening events that are an hour away can be kind of tricky for me. So, when I was compiling homes for this book, I added the Brown-Pusey House. I wanted it to be in this book, and I had to tour it to make that happen. Rather than attend the summer downtown tour, I decided to simply reach out to the director of the home and ask if we could tour. Since it is now used as an event space, not a home museum, I wanted to make sure we could get a tour. I received a response that same day that said, “Absolutely!” So, we hopped in the car and headed for Elizabethtown the very next day.
🤎 Before we get to our visit, let’s jump in and learn a little of this building’s history, starting with John Y. Hill.
John Y. Hill (1799-1859)
💚 John Y. Hill was born on August 14, 1799. Little is known about his early years until he arrived in Elizabethtown, KY, around 1818, from Virginia. Upon arrival, he established a tailoring shop, which was his learned trade. That business did not fare well for him, however, and he turned his attention to horse trading. Apparently, he didn’t do well with that either. He finally landed in the house building business, which included “burning brick.”
💛 Hill built several homes and a church in Elizabethtown, one of which was his personal home on the corner of Main and Poplar streets. His five-bay, two-story, Georgian-style home was built in 1825. The home was simple, with a single room to the left and right of the entry hall, on both the first and second floor. The home did include a cellar/basement, accessed from the inside of the home, and the walls were built three bricks thick, which seemed quite common in this time period.
🤎 Hill married twice. He first married Eliza Heyser on January 1, 1822. According to Find-a-Grave, Eliza died on September 16, 1825. John and Eliza had two children together: Mary Ellen Hill, who died shortly after her birth, and James H. Hill. James was born in January 1825, so he was a mere 9 months old when his mother died.
💚 Hill’s second wife was Rebecca Davis Stone, affectionately known as “Aunt Beck.” They married on August 14, 1827, in Nelson County, KY.
💛 John Y. Hill was very popular around town. I mean, he had built nearly a quarter of the buildings in Elizabethtown! Because of his popularity, he was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives for Hardin County in 1832.
🤎 Sometime around 1840, John and Aunt Beck turned their home into a boarding house, which then became known as Hill House or Hill’s Hotel. Additions were made to their home at that time.
💚 The Hills ran such a wonderful boarding house that it became very well-known. Travelers journeying from Louisville to Grayson Springs via the Louisville & Nashville Railroad would stop in Elizabethtown and have breakfast at Hill’s Hotel, where “the most sumptuous fare will always be found.”4 The home was also visited by some well-known individuals! Jenny Lind, the famous Swedish opera singer, sang from the front steps in 1851, and General Custer and his wife stayed in a cabin out back from 1871 to 1873 while rooting out the Ku Klux Klan in Kentucky before heading west. In addition, Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan often visited for Aunt Beck’s cooking.
❓ Want to know more, such as how the Hill House became known as the Brown-Pusey house? Click on the link in the comments to read the entire article on my website!
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🚗 Happy Travels!
