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 / Photo of image found in the brochure available at the Brown-Pusey Home.
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.”1
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.2
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.3 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.
“The Hill House flourished as word of Aunt Beck’s special coffee and hospitality spread across the Region. With the help of two servants, Aunt Beck continued to run the house until her death in 1882.”
Brown-Pusey Home
Becoming the Brown-Pusey Home
John Y. Hill passed away in 1859, leaving his wife, Aunt Beck, to continue operating the boarding house/hotel on her own. As noted above, she continued that business until her death in 1882.
At that time, James Hill, John Hill’s son from his first marriage, inherited the house and owned it until 1895. The home then passed through the hands of several different people and fell into disrepair. In 1922, the Pusey brothers, Dr. William A. Pusey and Dr. Alfred Brown Pusey, purchased the home.
The brothers spent most of their adult lives in Chicago, but they had Elizabethtown roots. You see, Aunt Beck was quite literally their aunt! The Puseys had fond memories of visiting with their great-aunt at the Hill Hotel and wanted to restore it and “give [it] back to the community they so loved.” At that time, they renamed it the Brown-Pusey House as a memorial to the Puseys’ maternal and paternal families. The ballroom, funded by the Puseys’ cousin, Alfred Hastings, was added in 1923 “to allow for larger gatherings.”
In 1923, they donated the home to the city of Elizabethtown. One hundred-three years later, the Brown-Pusey House continued to serve the community through “the Pusey Room Museum, a genealogical library, and meeting rooms for private and public functions. There is also a beautifully maintained garden for the public to enjoy.”5
The Pusey Brothers’ History
Dr. William Allen Pusey (1865 – 1940) was the older brother of Dr. Alfred Brown Pusey (1869-1953). Both were born in Elizabethtown, KY, to Dr. Robert Burns and Bell Brown Pusey. While both Puseys were raised in Elizabethtown, they spent their adulthood in Chicago following their medical careers.
Dr. William Allen Pusey attended local schools, followed by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and the Medical College of the University of New York City. It was from there that he received his MD degree in 1888. He then studied in Europe for a few years before settling in Chicago in 1893, where he specialized in the treatment of skin diseases.
He became “professor and head of the Department of Dermatology in the University of Illinois College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1894,” the president of the American Dermatological Association in 1910, president of the Chicago Medical Society in 1913, and president of the American Medical Association in 1925. He became an advisor to the Surgeon-General of the Army during World War I and became chairman of the Committee for the Control of Venereal Disease. In addition to all of the above, Dr. William Pusey was also active in many civic movements and wrote several books and papers.
Dr. William Allen Pusey / Photo credit: Public Domain
He died in Chicago in 1940 and was buried in the Elizabethtown City Cemetery.
Dr. Alfred Brown Pusey also attended local schools, followed by the University of Pennsylvania Department of Medicine in 1892. He was then appointed assistant surgeon in the U.S. Navy in 1893. He served until July 1, 1896. He studied overseas for several years before returning to Chicago to become a professor of ophthalmology from 1908 to 1927. He was a member of the American Ophthalmological Society and the Institute of Medicine of Chicago.6
Dr. Alfred Brown Pusey / Photo credit: Find-a-Grave
Dr. Alfred Pusey died of heart disease in 1953. He, too, was buried in the Elizabethtown City Cemetery.
Our Visit
For reasons I can’t explain, I’ve always had this memory of a home stuck in my head. The home had a ballroom-type space that extended out the back as an addition. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember which house it was, but I always remembered that room.
When we visited the Brown-Pusey House specifically to be added to this book, I just knew we had never been there before.
We started our tour through the parlour and into the dining room, where we saw a beautiful corner cabinet built by Thomas Lincoln, President Lincoln’s father.
The parlour and Thomas Lincoln’s Cabinet / All Photos Property of KHT unless otherwise noted
Nothing was familiar to me until our tour guide took my daughter and me into the addition. I stepped right into the room that I had stuck in my head for years! This was the home I remembered so well, but I couldn’t remember which house it was! I was flabbergasted. The room was exactly as I remembered it, but I remembered nothing else of the home.
I turned to my daughter and whispered in her ear, “We’ve been here before.”
Her response, “No, we haven’t.”
“Yes, we have. I remember this room like it was yesterday. I just didn’t remember which house it was in.”
Her response, “You’re crazy. We’ve never been here. I don’t remember any of this. We’ve never been here.”
But we had. I can’t tell you exactly when we visited, but we were there. That was a trip, clearly, when my daughter was much younger, we had taken with my mom. I remembered my daughter spinning around in the ballroom with one of her dresses swirling around her, as she did all the time when she was young.
Then our tour guide took us into the library that now functions as the office and as a small Hardin County historical library. Our guide talked to us about how the fireplace was taken out in the 1940s to add a pass-through to the wing on the side of the home that had once been Mr. Hill’s tailor shop. As soon as we stepped through the doorway (where the fireplace would have been), I remembered being in that room, too.
No matter how much persuading I did, my daughter did not remember visiting this home, but I did. More memories came to me as we explored the small museum that now fills the space that originally held Hill’s tailoring business, and as we stepped out into the Cunningham Garden out back.
The tour of the home includes the parlour, the library, a pass-through to the museum, the ballroom, dining room, an upstairs bedroom, and the Cunningham Garden. At some point, the right upstairs wing of the home was turned into an apartment space. These rooms are now used for brides to prepare for their big day when they are getting married on the grounds of the Brown-Pusey home.
On the day of our visit, our tour guide took us into the apartment space. The first two rooms are original to the home, but the back section was an addition. That space includes a kitchen and eating space that feels very mid-century modern. It’s certainly not the feel of the rest of the home. This space is not on the self-guided tour, but we received a personal tour for my blog, so we were shown everything – except for the basement/cellar space. It looked creepy enough from the top of the stairs, so I was okay with bypassing it!
A view from the parlour through to the museum, the staircase, the upstairs bedroom, and the main entry hall. / Photos property of KHT
Our guided tour ended in the museum, which we were allowed to explore on our own and take as much time as we wanted. The museum allows for an opportunity to learn a little about the Puseys. Dr. William Allen Pusey’s office is set up in the corner of Mr. Hill’s old tailor shop. It is set up exactly as it was in Chicago. It’s an interesting collision of time and space. You can envision the space as a tailoring business, but also see what Dr. Pusey’s office was like.
We were also able to explore the gardens in the rear of the home. We didn’t spend as much time there as I would have liked because on the day we visited, it was very rainy, and everything was soaking wet.
We wrapped up our time at the Brown-Pusey Home and took a few minutes to explore the downtown shops before grabbing some lunch and heading for our next history stop, which just happened to be the Oscar Getz Museum in Bardstown. (I’ll be bringing you a post on that soon.)
Reflection
While this is not the most elaborate home, and there are only a few rooms that are set as a home museum, I think this home gives you a little bit of everything. It’s extremely cool to step into Mr. Hill’s tailor shop that features items from the Pusey Brothers. You can envision the parlour and dining room filled with boarders enjoying Aunt Beck’s coffee and delicious meals. You can also appreciate the Pusey Brothers’ efforts of a community space with the ballroom that looks back in time to the original threshold and exterior wall of the home that still includes the windows and shutters. For a history buff, it’s very cool, and clearly, that ballroom will likely stick in your mind!
The Garden, looking back at Mr. Hll’s tailor shop, the sundial, and looking back at the ballroom addition. / Photos property of KHT
Until next time… Happy Travels!
- https://archive.org/details/historyofelizabe00hayc/page/n5/mode/2up ↩︎
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/195776178/john-y-hill ↩︎
- Brinegar, Kodee, “Brown-Pusey House a community home full of history,” The News-Enterprise, October 30, 2025 ↩︎
- https://kentuckykindredgenealogy.com/2018/10/27/major-john-y-hill-early-settler-of-elizabethtown-hardin-county/ ↩︎
- Brochure available at the Brown-Pusey Home ↩︎
- (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/75647389/william_allen-pusey ↩︎