Bath County was still young in the summer of 1817 — a place of rough cabins, hard‑packed roads, and the uneasy quiet that settles over a community where everyone knows everyone else’s business. The courthouse at Owingsville was barely a decade old. The Mt. Sterling Pike was little more than a wagon‑worn track. And at the foot of a hill where the road split, a gallows stood waiting for a woman whose story would outlive nearly every record of her life.
Her name was Ellenor (Eleanor) Gillespie, though the spelling shifts depending on which descendant or document you consult. She was a mother, a frontier wife, and by the judgment of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a murderer.
I. A House Where Violence Lived
The stories that survive about Ellenor’s marriage to John Hawkins are not kind to him. They come mostly from family accounts, passed down through generations of Gillespies and Hawkinses who remembered the man as a drinker, a bully, and a danger to the people inside his own home.
One descendant’s letter, preserved in local genealogical circles, puts it plainly:
“He beat her. He beat the children. He drank and came home mean.” — Family account quoted in regional histories
There were no protective orders in 1817. No sheriff to call. No neighbors eager to intervene in what was considered a man’s domain. A woman’s suffering was her own burden, and the law rarely cared to look inside a cabin unless blood had already been spilled.
By midsummer, the tension in the Hawkins home had reached a breaking point.
II. The Night of the Killing
The most consistent version of events goes like this: Hawkins came home drunk, as he often did, and collapsed into a stupor. Ellenor and her teenage son, Jacob Gillespie, stood over him in the dim light of a tallow candle.
“Ma,” Jacob whispered, “he’s gonna kill you one of these days.”
Ellenor didn’t answer at first. The rope was already in her hands — coarse hemp, the kind used for tying livestock or hauling feed. She had likely handled it a thousand times. But never like this.
“Help me,” she finally said.
Jacob hesitated only a moment before taking the other end.
They looped the rope around Hawkins’s neck. One pulled one way, one the other. It was quick, brutal, and silent except for the scrape of boots on the floorboards.
When it was done, Ellenor sank onto a stool, shaking. Jacob stood over the body, breathing hard.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“We tell the truth,” she said. “And we pray the truth is enough.”
It wasn’t.
III. The Arrest and the Jailhouse Plot
Bath County’s justice system moved fast in those days. Hawkins’s death was ruled a homicide, and Ellenor was charged with murder. Jacob, being a minor, was treated with leniency — a detail that would later fuel whispers that the boy had been coerced or misled.
Ellenor was locked in the county jail, a crude structure of logs and iron bars. It was there that one of the strangest episodes in early Kentucky criminal history unfolded.
A local man named George Lansdown(e) — described in some accounts as a friend, in others as a would‑be rescuer — visited her in her cell. What happened next became the stuff of Bath County legend.
“Ellenor,” he said quietly, “I can get you out of here.”
She looked at him, exhausted. “There’s no way.”
“There is,” he insisted. “But you’ll have to trust me.”
Lansdown began to undress — boots, trousers, shirt — until he stood in his underclothes. He handed her the garments.
“Put these on. Walk out with your head down. They’ll think you’re me.”
It was a desperate plan, but desperation was all she had left.
Ellenor dressed in the ill‑fitting clothes and stepped into the corridor. For a moment, it worked. She made it nearly to the door before a guard — David Fathey — narrowed his eyes.
“George?” he called. “That you?”
Ellenor froze.
Fathey stepped closer, suspicion turning to certainty.
“That ain’t George.”
He grabbed her by the arm, and the escape was over.
Later, Lansdown and Fathey fought in the street over the incident. Fathey won. The story spread quickly, becoming one of those tales that frontier communities never quite forget.
IV. The Gallows at the Forks of the Road
The execution was scheduled for July 26, 1817. Public hangings were community events then — grim, moralizing spectacles meant to reinforce the power of the law.
The gallows stood “at the forks of the road at the foot of the hill on the Mt. Sterling Pike,” a place chosen for visibility. People traveled from miles around. Children sat on their fathers’ shoulders. Ministers prayed loudly enough for the crowd to hear.
Ellenor was brought out in a wagon, her hands bound. Jacob was not permitted to see her.
A witness later recalled that she walked “steady, but pale.”
The sheriff read the sentence. The noose was placed around her neck. The crowd fell silent.
If Ellenor spoke final words, they were not recorded. The trap was sprung, and her life ended before the sun reached its highest point.
She was buried in what is now Owingsville Cemetery, her grave marked simply, without mention of the crime that defined her legacy.
V. What Remains After Two Centuries
Ellenor Gillespie’s story survives in fragments:
DeathPenaltyUSA lists her as a white female, executed for murder on July 26, 1817.
Executed Today published a historical summary on the 200th anniversary of her hanging.
Find‑a‑Grave preserves her burial information and a brief retelling of the case.
Local genealogists have passed down letters and oral histories describing Hawkins’s abuse and the jailbreak attempt.
None of these sources alone tells the whole story. But together, they paint a picture of a woman trapped in a violent marriage, pushed beyond endurance, and judged by a legal system that offered her no mercy.
Her son lived on. Her descendants scattered across Kentucky and beyond. And the gallows at the forks of the road rotted away long ago, reclaimed by the land.
But the story remains — a reminder of the harsh realities of frontier life, and of the women whose suffering was seen only when it was too late.
Sources & Notes
Executed Today, “1817: Ellenor Gillespie, hanged in Bath County, Kentucky,” July 26, 2017.
DeathPenaltyUSA database, Kentucky executions, entry for July 26, 1817.
Find‑a‑Grave memorial for Ellenor Gillespie, Owingsville Cemetery.
Bath County genealogical accounts and family letters referencing the Hawkins/Gillespie case and the Lansdown escape attempt.
Local oral histories preserved through regional historical societies.
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