From Hawesville estate sale to Pate House yard — the story of the stone steps

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Eli E. Gregory recently told a tourist at the Pate House in Lewisport about an old set of steps in the yard of the historic site. The three-step block may have been created by a Hawesville stoneworker in the 1800s.

Gregory and his father, the late Eli S. Gregory, moved the steps to the Pate House farm in the 1960s after his father bought them at an estate sale in Hawesville. They are a solid block of stone and are extremely heavy, possibly weighing up to a ton, he said.

When he and his father moved them to the property, they did not know for certain who originally owned them, who made them or what they were used for.

He said he read an article in The Hancock Clarion about a stoneworker who made gravestones and lived in the same area where the steps were found, and he thinks that may be the man who carved them. He believes the steps may have been used to give women some help with getting on horses to ride to town or back home from town in those days.

He said his father first saw the steps at an estate sale in 1960 or 1961, sitting in an area behind the home. His father asked if they were for sale and the sellers said he could make an offer. He offered $5 and bought them, but people at the sale wondered how he would move them to his farm at the Pate House in Lewisport.

Gregory, then 16, said his father enlisted his help to relocate the steps. His father drove home, picked him up and returned to the estate sale in his truck, bringing steel pipes and wooden boards for the task.

People at the estate sale laughed and said they would never be able to move the heavy stone steps, he said.

Using a pipe-rolling technique, they proved to the skeptics that they were incorrect in their assessments. He and his father had built a makeshift sled from the boards and pipes, using the pipes as rollers in a method similar to the way large stones were moved on logs in ancient times.

“When I was reading in The Clarion about the Hawesville stoneworker, it didn’t dawn on me until the end of the article, when they said he lived almost in between the Methodist Church and Baptist Church in Hawesville, on the other side of the road,” he said. “Back then there was a stone wall along the hill on that side of the road that kept water and dirt from washing down on the road. When the article said that is where the stoneworker lived, I thought, ‘That’s where we got those steps.’ He must’ve carved those steps.”

“My dad went to that sale, walked back and looked around and saw the steps sitting in the weeds. You couldn’t hardly see them,” he said. “Dad said, ‘I’m going to buy them and take them down to the farm.’ When the sale was over, he said, ‘Y’all not going to sell those steps back there?’ He said everyone started laughing.”

After his father bought the steps, people at the sale asked how he would move them. His father replied that he would go get his son to help. Gregory said the crowd of people at the estate sale all doubted they could move the massive block.

He recalled what his father told him they were saying, such as, “Just you and your son? You think you can carry those steps out of there?”

“My dad said, ‘Well, I think we can get them out of there.’ He came and got me and we went and got the pipes; all of that pipe was 3-inch pipe, and some long boards. We pried it up in the air and got those boards under it and put the pipe under the board. We just scooted it up on those boards and, man, here it comes down over that hill, just a’flying. It was rolling on those pipes,” he said. “We had to block part of the road and backed the pickup truck into that stone wall and put the boards down and then just set it right down in the pickup truck.”

“We had a whole crowd of people watching us. They were laughing at us and going on. When we got it in the truck, they pretty much quit laughing.”

Gregory said he then asked his father what the steps were for. His father answered with his educated guess that they may have been used to help women mount their horses.

He said his father read extensively about earlier times and had learned that many places had steps like these available for that purpose. Perhaps these particular steps were made by the stoneworker in Hawesville for his wife, mother or daughter to use at home when they needed a boost onto their horse.

He and his father took the steps to the farm in Lewisport and unloaded them.

“My dad bought that farm where the old Pate House is in 1956. That was my dad’s farm,” he said. “We didn’t use the steps for anything. My dad set up a hitching post beside them, so it looked like you could lead your horse over there, tie it off and then use them to get up on the horse. They are still sitting out there toward the front yard.”

After that, they never moved them again because of their weight. He said the steps once had some writing on them.

They were never able to make out what the inscription said, and since then whatever writing was there has been washed away over time.

He said he understands that the man who lived at the house where the estate sale was held, back in the 1800s, was a stone carver and that he is sure he made the steps.

“I had no idea that the steps my dad and I got came from there until the article said where the stoneworker lived,” he said. “I thought to myself, ‘Good Lord, that’s probably where we got those steps at.’ He must’ve carved them. I think he carved them and never did do anything with them because they were sitting behind the house back in some weeds. You couldn’t hardly see them. Behind those houses there, it’s all rough all the way up that hill. He had a backyard but after you get out of his backyard, there is a lot of rock there.”

He said his dad always wondered if the rock the steps were carved from came from the area and would say, “Where those steps were sitting, I just wonder if a great big rock rolled off that hill and rolled down there in his backyard and then he carved those steps out of it.”

The day they unloaded the steps at the Pate House, he said his father joked, “I guarantee nobody will ever steal them.”

“It was funny because we had a bigger crowd of people watching us bring the steps down over the hill than they had at the estate sale,” he said. “When we put the steps in the back of the truck, that pickup truck was loaded. It probably weighs close to a ton because it is solid rock. They are really just a conversational piece. Anyone that comes there to tour the Pate House wants to know what they are. My dad would always tell them. He always had several big stories to tell. He loved that — telling people about the old house and Abraham Lincoln.”

“We had a family ledger at one time and I’m not sure what happened to that. He told them about Abraham Lincoln’s girlfriend, Caroline Meeker. It was my great-aunt’s farm. My great-granddad, Ed Gregory, married Squire Pate’s daughter. My great-granddad and his family lived at Cloverport when the Civil War started. He fought for the South and his two brothers fought for the North. They never did get along. He moved to Lewisport and started a tobacco house, where he’d store it and steamboats would come here and pick it up and take it south.”

It is sad, he said, that so many families were divided by their Civil War loyalties and that his great-grandfather and his brothers never spoke again after the war.

Gregory’s grandfather was Henry Gregory, son of Edward “Ed” Gregory and Letitia “Leti” Pate Gregory, who was the daughter of Samuel “Squire” Pate and Areyetta “Arietta” Thrasher.

“There is someone up there all the time at the Pate House,” he said. “You can’t go up there and spend an hour without someone driving in to look at that old house. My son, Chad Gregory, and I keep the graveyard mowed and the yard mowed. People walk around and look in the graveyard. There are still a lot of people who like to learn about the history.”

“That’s exactly where Abraham Lincoln got interested in law at. In our family ledger, he fought his own case there. Part of the ledger said he would come back and borrow law books and study law. He’d take a johnboat and ferry people across Anderson River. Then he took some people out to the steamboat and the people that run the ferry boat going across the Ohio River said he was carrying people across the river. He wasn’t doing that. He just took some people out to the steamboat. That whole incident is what caused him to be a lawyer.”

Lincoln’s first court appearance defending himself at the Pate House was in 1827. Born Feb. 12, 1809, he was about 18 when he was charged with operating an unlicensed ferry and tried before Justice Samuel “Squire” Pate at his Lewisport home. Pate dismissed the charge on a technical reading of the statute.

He was only transporting passengers to the middle of the river and back, not across it. After studying law books at Squire Pate’s library and learning what the law said, he argued his case and won, then went on to become a lawyer. He was admitted to the bar on Jan. 9, 1836, and on Nov. 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States.

During childhood, Lincoln and his family lived in southern Kentucky, near Hodgenville in Hardin County, and later moved to a farm at Knob Creek. The family had also lived in the Elizabethtown area, before relocating to southern Indiana near present-day Gentryville in Harrison County. Historical accounts say Lincoln also visited the Pate House as a child in 1816.

Gregory said it is a shame that the 1826-1827 event in Lewisport is not represented more in history books, even though it played a significant role in Lincoln’s path to the presidency. He believes, as many others do including myself, that the Pate House should be recognized as a major historic site because of its Lincoln connection.

Gregory helped his father keep the yard and graveyard on the property mowed and cleaned regularly, much as his son, Chad, now helps him maintain it.

He was mowing the farm one day in March this year when Bolen-Lee brought a man to tour the house. She owns a tourism business called Pam’s Traveling Friends in Lewisport. He said he told the visitor what he knew about the steps and how he and his father brought them there in the 1960s.

Gregory said that if his father decided he wanted to do something, he would always find a way.

He said he cannot remember the name of the family that held the estate sale where he and his father acquired the steps.

“Later on in years, I brought home a lot of things from Vietnam,” he said. “I got Agent Orange and stuff that has affected my health pretty badly. But I’m still here. I can’t complain. A lot of people came back a whole lot worse than I was… When I was a kid, my dad was a commercial fisherman on the river. He got deferred out of the Army because he worked in a shipyard. He built landing ship tanks in Pittsburgh. We didn’t come home until after the war. The Japanese surrendered in August 1945.”

“He had an old ’36 Plymouth, one of those old long ones, and he stopped at the gas station and the gas attendant said, ‘Can you fit anything else in this car? What have you got in that car?’ My dad said, ‘I have her loaded down. I have everything I own in that car — I’ve got a wife, two kids, a cat and a bird dog.’ They were originally from Lewisport but when they got here they didn’t have anything. They made a good life for themselves and a real good life for me and my sister. We had anything we wanted, practically. My parents believed in working.”

The notation “Mason” following Smart’s name is understood as his occupation rather than a middle name, marking him as a professional stoneworker living in Hawesville during the early to mid-1800s and making him a strong documented candidate for the craftsman who made headstones.

After researching, I could not find the name of the specific stoneworker from the article Gregory read. Smart may have carved the stone steps his father found in the 1960s, though I could not find the address where he lived either. The transcription does not explicitly say Smart carved the cemetery markers, but it emphasizes his status and unique monument, suggesting his prominence in that trade.

If you can confirm the name of the stoneworker who made many of the headstones in local cemeteries, especially in Hawesville, please email me at [email protected] so this article can be updated with the correct name. If you know for certain that this particular stoneworker lived at the location described in Hawesville and that he carved the stone steps now located at the Pate House, please contact me so I can provide an update.