A Presbyterian church in DeWitt County was under construction in the summer of 1859, but work halted for lack of funds after the floor was laid and the walls, roof, and belfry were nearly complete. In October 1859, with an unobstructed view from the building site to the DeWitt County Courthouse on the public square, church ladies held a festival during court week to benefit from the generosity of visitors in town on legal business. Lincoln attended wearing his stovepipe hat, and when Mrs. Elizabeth Kent and Miss Roberts offered to take it at the entrance, where there was no door, he declined because it contained important papers and instead placed it high on an unfinished beam. According to local lore, he also aided the fundraising by buying a bouquet of violets from a little girl for five dollars. Lincoln's caution about his hat at the church event contrasts with an August 1864 incident he later recounted to Ward Hill Lamon, his good friend from their days in DeWitt County on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, when a rifle shot startled his horse Old Abe as he rode alone to the Soldiers' Home and his eight-dollar plug hat was thrown off and later found with a bullet hole by soldiers on guard duty.