The Dallam-Bush House was probably built by James L. Dallam, clerk of the county court, in the very late 1830s or early 1840s. Dallam purchased the lot in 1839, though records are unclear whether a house already stood there, and while the courthouse was under construction he used one of the front rooms as the court clerk's office in 1842. Built in two parts, with the section parallel to Mill Street the older portion, the house had ten rooms, five on each level, including one upper room used as slave quarters, along with eight fireplaces and brick walls one foot thick. The house is mentioned on the deed when the property was sold in 1854. During the Civil War it was the home of Blount Hodge, who was born in North Caroline, came to Kentucky with his family at age seven, and by 1850 was listed in the census as a trader; he also succeeded in farming and banking, accumulated a large estate, and frequently entertained Federal troops there before dying in Smithland in 1877. In 1881 local attorney John W. Bush purchased the house. Bush had served in the Civil War as captain of Company G, 48th Kentucky Mounted Infantry, U.S.A., a regiment raised in western Kentucky to counter raids into the state and deal with guerrilla bands; it mustered into service on October 26, 1863, and in April 1864, while most of the regiment was stationed along the Louisville and Nashville Railroad between Cave City and Louisville, Company G was sent to Smithland and Bush was appointed post commander. Bush lived in the house until his death, and it remained in his family until 1947. Bush's career was touched by a violent wartime legal case that reflected the unsettled conditions of western Kentucky, where Union and Confederate raids and attacks by guerrillas or armed bandits disrupted life. Between his enlistment in July 1863 and his unit's muster into Federal service in October, he was indicted in Lyon County for the killing of Richard T. Harris, who was described in differing accounts as either a guerrilla or a Confederate sympathizer, by a grand jury that was also pro-Confederate. Because Lyon County indictments from 1863 were stolen, Bush never went on trial; when the legislature allowed such indictments to be reissued in 1865, he had already received a pardon from Governor Bramlette. Prosecutors appealed on the grounds that a pardon could not be issued before conviction, but the State Court of Appeals upheld the pardon in 1866, and the case later resurfaced when Governor Paul Patton cited it in June 2003 in support of several controversial pardons.