Ellis-O'Connell House, 209 West Main Street. Two-story, five-bay brick residence with a gable roof built in 1852. The central passage plan is one room deep with gable-end chimneys. There are brick jack arches over the windows and a deep bracketed cornice and frieze. The recessed central entrance is framed by a simple entablature with brackets, sidelights
with colored glass, and fluted Corinthian half columns. To the rear is a single story brick ell. The front of the property is delineated by a cast-iron fence with a stone base.
Hezekiah Ellis who was a director of the Lexington and Big Sandy Railroad built the house in 1852 and sold it to Mack O'Connell in 1864 after Ellis suffered financial reverses in the panic of 1857. Mack or M.C. O'Connell was a grocer who served five or six consecutive terms on the City Council. He accumulated considerable property in Mt. Sterling. The
house is the birthplace of W.B. O'Connell, clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Born in 1865, O'Connell established the newspaper Evening Free Lance, famous during the silver campaigns of 1896 and 1897.O'Connell became the Montgomery County Clerk in 1897. The house was sold in 1880 to Mrs. Strauther S. Gaitskill (Maggie Apperson). The Gaitskill family lived here from 1880 to 1936.
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